A New Holic
by NovaFoster
Summary: This is the continuation of xxxHolic as I thought it would generally be-a time when the reincarnation of Yuuko seeks Watanuki out in search of memories she didn't have, and wants back. - This story is officially and perhaps pertinently on hiatus because I just can't seem to continue it. If I do pick it up again, I will likely redo the entire thing.
1. Prolog

Prolog

"You want what?" Watanuki asked disbelievingly.

"You heard me," the woman sitting across from him replied calmly. "I know they're not here anymore, but you can find them. Please do so."

"You don't have anything to trade for it," Watanuki told her.

"I have information that you would find highly valuable," the woman disagreed. "Honestly, knowing you, you would find it more valuable then everything in that storeroom of yours."

Watanuki raised his eyebrow—he doubted that, but he had known this woman for quite some time, and she was rarely wrong.

What her real name was, he didn't know, but he called her Jesse. That was what she was going by when they first met, and that was decades ago. She was a beautiful pale skinned woman of European descent with dark curls and green eyes. She had known Yuuko, and had come to the shop with a request, only to find Yuuko gone and Watanuki in her place. It wasn't the first time some of Yuuko's old friends had come, unaware of her disappearance, nor was it the last.

Most of the people who hadn't realized Yuuko was gone were witches, like herself. They were humans with inhuman powers—ones who didn't age, and didn't die naturally. There were sorceresses, vampires, and other such physical beings as well. They were ones that didn't walk the border of the physical world and the spiritual world.

And so here was Jesse, one of Yuuko's old drinking friends, asking him to find the rarest gem in the world—jadeite.

Or rather, a pair of jadeite beads. She knew they were in Japan, but couldn't find them. That was where Watanuki came in.

"Look," Jesse continued, flicking her long hair over her shoulder, "I'm not asking you to go out and get them, just to find out where they are. I can get them myself."

"And what is this information you think is so valuable," Watanuki asked.

"I'll tell you after you tell me where those beads are," Jesse replied. "I know how important balance is to you—what I have to tell you may be too much payment for the task, and I wouldn't want you to get hurt."

"The store hasn't hurt me for quite some time," Watanuki smiled at her slightly.

"That doesn't mean it won't happen again," Jesse pointed out.

She glanced around the store—completely unchanged in all the years since Watanuki had inherited it. Watanuki was the most unchanged, except for his glasses—the round glasses that made him look way too much like a certain annoying someone.

"How long has it been, now?" She wondered. "About a hundred and ten years?"

"That sounds about right," Watanuki agreed.

"And you haven't left this sliced world once?" Jesse questioned.

"If I do, my time will start to move again," Watanuki reminded her, "and I can't let that happen yet."

Jesse looked at him like she wanted to say something on the subject, tapping her long fork against the small white plate her piece of cake had been served on, but seemed to think better of it. Instead she put the fork down and looked at her delicate silver wrist watch.

"I have to leave now," she said, and stood. "I'll only be in this country for the next five days—please find those beads by then. I don't want to have to wait for them in the mail, and I really don't have time to."

Watanuki made an amused noise. "Maru, Moro," he said, and they entered the room immediately, giggling and laughing with each other. "Show our guest out."

"Guest, guest!" They repeated excitedly.

"I'll see you tomorrow," Jesse said as Maru and Moro each grabbed one of her hands, and she gripped theirs back.

"Tomorrow," Watanuki agreed.

After she was gone, outside of the shop's barrier, Watanuki picked the plates up at took them to the kitchen.

"So what did she want?" Doumeki asked.

He was just like his great grandfather—Watanuki thought it every time he saw him. Not just in appearance, but in personality. Especially in the annoying way they both spoke. It made it easier that this Doumeki was one Watanuki had known since his birth, but not by much.

Right now he was getting things ready for dinner. He spent more time in the shop than he did at the temple he was supposed to be inheriting. Also just like his great grandfather.

"She wants me to find something," Watanuki answered, and he started chopping up the washed vegetables. "A pair of jadeite beads."

"I thought all the jadeite in the world was accounted for," Doumeki said.

"It is," Watanuki sighed. "These particular beads were stolen from her a while ago—before you were born. They were here in the store for a while, but they're gone now. She's managed to track them to Japan, but needs me to find out where."

"Isn't she a witch, too?" Doumeki pointed out. "Can't she find them without your help?"

"She has very little talent for barriers," Watanuki replied, "and it's rather obvious there's one hiding these beads."

"So how will you find them?" Doumeki asked.

"How do you think?" Watanuki asked back.

…

Watanuki opened his eyes to a room. It was completely empty except for the wards up in every corner. Watanuki left the room and walked along the outdoor hall. There were wards and talismans everywhere—someone was trying very, very hard to hide something…like a very rare gem from a very dangerous woman with a very bad temper.

So where was this place?

It looked like a temple of some kind. It wasn't as old as Doumeki's, but it had obviously been around for at least a couple centuries. It was places like this that made good hiding places. The energy was old, and it masked both the barriers and the beads themselves, no matter how much energy Jesse had put in them.

The barriers didn't work on someone who wasn't actually there, though. Watanuki could sense which way the beads were. He had to travel through several different halls and rooms, but he did find them.

The room was in the center of the temple, thus the center of five layers of barriers. The room itself was so covered in wards and talismans that Watanuki couldn't even see the walls. If whoever had stolen them was so afraid of Jesse, why would they steal from her in the first place? It didn't make sense.

They obviously weren't using the beads. They were just sitting on a stand in the center of the room, still connected to the silver hooks that made them earrings.

"Intruder."

Watanuki looked around, but couldn't see whoever had whispered the word. Then it came again and again until it sounded like an entire crowd was whispering it.

After a few seconds, Watanuki realized the words were coming from the wards. They were alerting whomever to his presence.

And then the whispering stopped.

"Intruder."

It wasn't a whisper this time. Watanuki turned to see a child standing behind him, and looking right up into his eyes.

It wasn't that surprising, though—this child wasn't human. He looked like a small ten year old with white skin and hair and expressionless blue eye, but Watanuki could easily tell that he was a _shikigami_.

"What are you doing here, intruder?" The _shikigami_ asked.

"These earrings belong to a friend of mine," Watanuki told him.

"They have to stay there," the _shikigami_ said. "I protect them."

"What were they brought here for?" Watanuki asked.

"I don't know," the _shikigami_ replied. "I simply protect them."

"Who do you belong to?" Watanuki asked.

"My master's name is to destroy," the _shikigami_ answered. He placed his hand on Watanuki's chest, and the next thing he knew he was back in the shop, lying on the couch exactly as he had been before.

…

"My master's name is to destroy?" Jesse repeated.

"That's what he said," Watanuki shrugged.

Jesse took a sip of the wine she had brought to the shop with her—a red wine from France—and thought about that. They were sitting by the open door of a room they could see the moon from. It was almost spring, and the cherry tree in the backyard looked like it was going to start blooming soon.

"Well," Jesse eventually said, "you found my beads, regardless, right?"

"Yeah," Watanuki assured her. "I made sure to leave enough of my energy for you to find it with this." He handed her a piece of cotton paper—a _shikigami_ of his own.

"Thank you," Jesse smiled, accepting it. She tucked it under her light blue day dress, into her ample breast. "Since you're leading me to what I want, I'll lead you to what you want."

Watanuki raised his eyebrow. "What do you mean?"

"You'll see," Jesse said a bit teasingly, and just kept sipping her wine.

…

For the first time in a long time, Watanuki wondered where he was and why it was dark—then he realized it was a dream.

It really had been a long time since he hadn't realized such a thing right away.

He had been in black dreams like this before, but there was something strange about it. This place felt more like the shop than a dream.

Watanuki had been lying on the ground when he opened his eyes, but he got up now and turned an entire three hundred and sixty degrees—nothing. Why was he there, then? Whose dream was this and where were they?

He exhaled slowly and started to search. Not physically, of course, what he did was spread his energy out over the dream world, looking for anything and everything other than himself.

He did find some things—mostly other dream seers, but he knew this wasn't their dream. He searched further, but there was nothing. No one he didn't already know, no one who didn't belong in the dream world. Nothing…except a scent, he noticed.

He wasn't sure what kind of scent it was. Maybe it was some kind of flower or fruit, perhaps cherry blossoms or plum blossoms. Either way, it was something to go on, so he followed it—he followed it for quite a while. He had to actually cross through more than a few dream worlds to get to the source.

The place the scent was coming from was also very dark, but not a world of blackness. It looked like the yard of a very old, traditional Japanese house. It was decrepit, even, though it must have been an extremely grand mansion at some point. The house itself was falling apart, and the yard was left to grow wild. There didn't seem to be anything beyond the fence around the grounds—the gate was closed, so he couldn't even see beyond it—so he didn't bother looking in that direction.

Watanuki entered the house.

The inside wasn't much better than the outside. There were spider webs and mold all over the walls, the furniture was dirty and rotting away, the windows were broken and decaying…obviously no one had lived here for decades.

The only smell was the one he had followed, though, like the wasted house was only an illusion. It could have been just an image—just a memory in whoever's dream this was—so Watanuki didn't bother to walk around the house to look. He spread his energy out again to look for the source…and still couldn't find it. There was no one there other than himself.

Now he was getting frustrated—he wasn't used to this game of hide and seek, and the fact that he didn't know who had called him bothered him more than seemed necessary.

There was something in the backyard, though, so he went in that direction—and what he found was a plum tree. Its blossoms were in full bloom, so he figured that was what had led him there. Maybe the dream was the plum tree's.

Watanuki stepped off the outdoor hall and walked up to it. Its essence was familiar, but it wasn't until he touched it that he realized Jesse's energy was coming from it. This must have been what she meant by "leading."

"Okay," Watanuki said. "I'm here—what do you think is here that I want?"

Someone giggled.

Watanuki turned, startled by the clear, ringing noise. He was so sure that he was alone, too.

And yet when he turned, there was a girl there. Watanuki stared, wide eyed.

"How funny," she said mockingly, "talking to a tree."

Watanuki stepped toward the girl slowly, but with each step he took, his pace quickened until he was almost running up to the hall, but he stopped when he was a foot away from her. She didn't back away. If anything, she looked amused.

This girl in front of him looked around the same age he did, and she was shorter than him by about three or four inches. Her hair was the same, though—long and black—and her eyes were the same—almost a reddish brown—and her smile was the same—knowing and mocking.

"Yuuko," Watanuki said.

This was a younger Yuuko, but Yuuko nonetheless. She was the same—Watanuki could see that. He could see her essence.

He brushed his fingers across her cheek, feeling like he could burst out crying, and wrapped his arms around her.

This was definitely Yuuko—even her warmth was the same.

"Watanuki?"

Watanuki's eyes snapped open. He was back in the shop, and Jesse was hovering over him. She had a fair amount of her energy gathered in her hand, feeding it into his chest.

"Why did you wake me up?" he demanded.

"Because you looked like you were having a heart attack," Jesse said matter-of-factly. "You saw her, right?"

Watanuki nodded.

"Did she see you?"

Watanuki nodded again. "I was able to touch her," he said, looking at the fingers that he had used to brush the young Yuuko's cheek—they were still tingling. "For the first time in more than a hundred years, I was able to feel her."

"Then I'm sure she'll come here," Jesse told him with a smile, "since everything is Fate's doing."

"Jesse," Watanuki began, but found it was hard to continue—he really did feel like he had just had a heart attack. After sitting up properly and taking a few deep breaths, he managed to ask, "How long have you known about her?"

"A few years," Jesse said.

"Why didn't you tell me sooner?" Watanuki asked.

"Because I knew that it would mess with that balance nonsense you hold so important," Jesse answered, matter-of-fact again.

Watanuki let out a short laugh. "Yes, it would have," he agreed.

…

Watanuki searched for that dream world again the next night, the night after that, and the night after that. Eventually a week had passed, but Watanuki still couldn't find the little Yuuko's dream.

He sat in the backyard, watching the sun set, thinking about it.

Was that really Yuuko?

She didn't seem to have recognized him, and if she was Yuuko, why had she looked so young?

But Yuuko was the only person Watanuki could think of who would be able to hide from him within a dream. With his power as strong as it had grown, there shouldn't have been anyone able to do that anymore.

A sense went off in Watanuki's head, then—someone had crossed through the gate. He hadn't been expecting a customer, and he could usually predict when one was going to come. Perhaps it wasn't a person, then.

Either way, Watanuki stood and went back into the house—it was probably someone not human.

Watanuki heard the door open, and for a second there was complete silence before Maru's and Moro's high pitched screaming rang throughout the shop. For a second Watanuki felt panic and started running toward them, fearing that whatever had entered the shop had attacked them, but then he realized their screams were joyful.

Watanuki turned around the dividing wall and found them in the entry way, on the floor right in front of the door. They were so happy they were crying as they clung to the girl who had entered. It looked like they had jumped on her the second they saw her, and Watanuki couldn't blame them.

"Yuuko?" Watanuki questioned slowly.

"Oh, it's the guy who assaulted me in my dream," the young Yuuko teased. "This is a strange place," she commented, glancing around. "It's so full of so many different energies." She looked at Maru and Moro as she placed her hands on their heads. "These two, though…they feel like me."

"Are you Yuuko?" Watanuki asked, walking over to them, and he helped her up. Maru and Moro continued to cling and cry, and she let them.

"You can call me that if you like," she allowed. "I'm certainly not going to give my real name to a man I just met, not to mention who forced himself on me."

"I did no such—" Watanuki began, but couldn't continue with the way Yuuko was smiling at him.

And it was definitely her. Watanuki knew that "Yuuko Ichihara" was a fake name—Yuuko had said so the first time Watanuki had met her. This girl standing in front of him was the same—smiled the same, acted the same, made Watanuki mad the same as she always had.

"What's your name?" Yuuko asked.

"Watanuki," he answered. "Kimihiro Watanuki."

"What is this place?" Yuuko probed.

"A store," Watanuki said.

"What do you sell here?"

"I grant wishes," Watanuki told her, "for an appropriate price."

"Wishes?" Yuuko repeated, tilting her head to the side curiously. "What kind of wishes?"

"Any wish," Watanuki replied. "If I have the power to grant it, and if the customer can pay the price, I grant whatever their wish is."

"Really?" Yuuko grinned. "I suppose it's fate that I met you, then—would you grant my wish?"

"What wish is that?" Watanuki asked.

"You see, I've forgotten something," Yuuko told him, "and no matter how hard I try, I can't remember it. I think it's something extremely important, but for some reason, I can't remember what it is."

Watanuki stared at her for a moment, and then smiled.

"I can grant that wish," he told her, "but only if you're willing to pay the price."

"What would it be?" Yuuko asked.

Watanuki thought about that for a moment, but then decided, why the hell not? "Service," he said. "I could use some more help around here—once you've done enough work, I'll grant your wish."

Yuuko made a contemplative noise. "Perv," she said, and then laughed at the angry, embarrassed look Watanuki gave her.

"I didn't mean like that," he half yelled indignantly.

"Oh, that's good," Yuuko said, and she took off her shoes to step up into the hall, "since if you want me to work here, I'll have to stay here."

Watanuki sighed. Maru and Moro had steadily quieted down to sniffling, but still hadn't let Yuuko go at all—they moved with her, clutching her red dress.

"That's fine," Watanuki said. _Since this was your store to begin with._

* * *

><p>Author's Notes:<p>

So this, as it says at the top, is a prolog to the following fanfic. I thought that it would be better to do this than to jump right into a story predominantly from a young Yuuko's perspective, which the following will be...or rather, I thought it would be less confusing for the readers. Enjoy.


	2. Chapter 1 P1

One-Part One

This is my world.

There was a girl who thought this over and over again. It was a world with no one else—no one who would hurt her in any way. She was the only one there. The old house that didn't exist, the familiar rooms that she had never seen before, the over grown garden that was teeming with life…it was all only for her.

That was what she had thought for a great deal of time.

So why was she feeling someone else?

The girl stood and left the room she had been sitting in. She glimpsed the swing of white cloth heading out to the back yard, and followed it—there was nothing out there except a plum tree that was always in bloom.

The girl peeked around the edge of the sliding paper door—there was a boy there, standing in front of the plum tree.

"Okay," he said to it, "I'm here—what do you think is here that I want?"

The girl couldn't entirely restrain her laugh.

The boy turned abruptly, like her giggle had startled him, and stared at her with wide, mismatched eyes.

"How funny," she said, unable to resist the urge to make fun of him, "talking to a tree."

He continued to stare at her for another moment, then started walking toward her, and that walk quickly turned into a run. The girl wasn't scared by this—the look on his face was one like a boy who had been separated from his mother and just found her again.

"Yuuko?" He said when he was right up in front of her.

There was something familiar about that, the girl thought—something familiar about the name and the boy saying it. The girl would have asked who that was—who he was obviously mistaking her for—but then he brushed his fingers across her cheek, looking like he wanted to cry.

They were warm, she thought—warm and, once again, familiar. But she had never met this boy before…or had she? Had she just forgotten him?

She had always felt she wasn't remembering something important, though there wasn't a moment of her life she _didn't_ remember.

Then the boy hugged her—that was not something she was used to. And yet it felt so comfortable.

But then the boy was gone—he must have woken up.

The girl sank to the floor. Who was that boy and how had he gotten into her the world that was just for her?

…

The girl waited until the building was empty, and then left. She was going to find that boy in the physical world—maybe he knew something about her and her abilities. Maybe he could see and do the things she and her teachers could. Maybe he would tell her things her teachers wouldn't.

And so she left.

Tokyo was a large city. She had never really been out and about in it by herself, but that was okay. She was resourceful.

There were many strange things in the city, though—many things that most people couldn't see. It was easy to get distracted and look at them—which was what she did for the next seven days. She had taken a kind of drug that enabled her to stay awake for days on end. It wasn't until the seventh day, as she was walking around, that she realized how much time had passed. She began to worry that her teachers would find her—surely they were looking for her.

Then she noticed what she was walking next to—a fence. She wondered why there was a wood fence like that in the middle of the city, in the middle of all these tall buildings.

A strange fence…full of energy. There were barriers all over the space the fence blocked off. Wards, talismans in the shapes of moons—they were even on the house in the middle of the lot. A familiar house.

The girl went in without hesitation.

There was a beautiful garden in the yard. The flowers seemed to give off an aura of their own. It was a very happy aura, too—she figured whoever lived here must take good care of them. She could almost see them smiling.

The girl took her eyes away from them, though, as she entered the house. It wasn't until after she had already opened the door and stepped inside that it occurred to her that she probably should have knocked.

She heard running footsteps and giggling before she saw two young girls come around the corner. They weren't human girls, though. They held a lot of the same energy as the air in the house…and a lot of energy that felt like her own.

These two girls simply stared at her for a moment, shock on their faces, then started smiling and crying and screaming as they ran at her and jumped on her. They did this with so much force that they actually knocked her back.

They looked so happy, and were clinging to her like their lives depended on it.

"Hey," she said, getting herself into a sitting position, "it's alright, you don't have to cry."

She heard more running footsteps then and now it was the boy who came running around the corner, and freezing when he spotted her. This time he was wearing round glasses, though—they annoyed her.

"Yuuko?" He questioned.

Yes, he was definitely mistaking her for someone else.

"Oh, it's the guy who assaulted me in my dream," she said teasingly, and he looked embarrassed by her choice of words. That was fun. "This is a strange place," she commented—strange, but she almost recognized it. "It's so full of so many different energies." She looked at the girls still hugging her and started petting their hair. "These two, though…they feel like me."

"Are you Yuuko?" The boy asked as he helped her up, and the girls still wouldn't let go.

He had warm hands—very kind ones. What did she tell him, though?

"You can call me that if you like," she decided. She wouldn't mind going by that name for a while, and it wasn't like she was pretending to be whoever this "Yuuko" was. "I'm certainly not going to give my real name to a man I just met, not to mention who forced himself on me."

"I did no such—" he started to yell, blushing, but stopped to just stare at the playful smile on her face.

"What's your name?" She asked.

"Watanuki," he answered. "Kimihiro Watanuki."

"What is this place?" "Yuuko" probed.

"A store," Watanuki replied.

"What do you sell here?"

"I grant wishes," he told her, "for an appropriate price."

"Wishes?" "Yuuko" repeated curiously. "What kind of wishes?"

"Any wish," Watanuki said. "If I have the power to grant it, and if the customer can pay the price, I grant whatever their wish is."

"Really?" Yuuko felt a grin stretching across her face. "I suppose it's fate that I met you, then—would you grant my wish?"

"What wish is that?" Watanuki asked.

"You see, I've forgotten something," Yuuko told him easily, "and no matter how hard I try, I can't remember it. I think it's something extremely important, but for some reason, I can't remember what it is."

Watanuki stared at her for a moment, and then smiled.

"I can grant that wish," he told her, "but only if you're willing to pay the price."

"What would it be?" Yuuko asked.

He thought about it for a moment, and then got an almost mischievous look in his eye. "Service," he eventually said. "I could use some more help around here—once you've done enough work, I'll grant your wish."

Service? She didn't do heavy lifting, but if he could get back whatever she had forgotten, it would be worth it. It still annoyed her, though, so she said, "Perv," in response and then laughed at the fresh anger and embarrassment spreading across his face. He was so easy to make fun of.

"I didn't mean like that," he yelled indignantly.

"Oh, that's good," Yuuko said as she took off her shoes to step up into the hall, "since if you want me to work here, I'll have to stay here." If her teachers found her and found out she was hanging out with this strange boy with his strange energy, they would kill her. She could only hope the energy filling the place would mask her own.

"That's fine," Watanuki said simply, following her as she walked down the hall.


	3. Chapter 1 P2

One-Part Two

"Water the flowers for me."

That was what Watanuki had asked Yuuko to do after showing her to the room she would be sleeping in. It was a big room with a big bed—nostalgic and welcoming. The wardrobe was already full of clothes that were in her size. Watanuki had told her that was just something the store did on its own. His words made sense to her, strange as they were, so she didn't question him.

And so she watered the garden while Watanuki started making dinner.

Yuuko splashed the water out over the bushes of roses, lilies, hydrangeas, and more flowers she didn't know the names to, twirling around as she went. It was a very happy place indeed. The little girls, Maru and Moro, seemed just as happy as the plants as they twirled around with her, but also in the same way.

"Hey," Yuuko said, looking down at them, "what are you two?"

"Maru and Moro are spirits," they replied together.

"Spirits?" Yuuko repeated as she placed her hands on their heads. "I've met spirits before—you two definitely aren't like them."

"We're spirits," Maru insisted.

"That Mistress created," Moro continued.

"Mistress?" Yuuko questioned curiously. "You mean Watanuki?"

"Watanuki is Watanuki," they disagreed together. "Mistress is Mistress."

"Who's your Mistress?" Yuuko asked them.

"You are," they told her.

Yuuko made a curious noise as she bent her knees so that she was more eye level with them, and looked at them intently. "I don't remember creating you two."

"That's okay," Maru said.

"Because Mistress is still Mistress," Moro finished.

Yuuko laughed and hugged them. "I hope creating you two will be something I remember when Watanuki grants my wish."

"You're sure that's her?" Doumeki asked.

It was the early evening now, and he had come over after school—he was a college student—as usual to find a pretty young girl playing with Maru and Moro in the yard as they watered the flowers.

"It's her," Watanuki nodded.

They were watching the playing from the kitchen window.

"How do you know," Doumeki probed. "Just because they have the same face?"

"No," Watanuki shook his head, smiling slightly. "She feels the same, acts the same…it's called reincarnation."

Doumeki looked at Yuuko, dancing around the yard, laughing with Maru and Moro. The way his great grandmother had described "Yuuko" was that she was a beautiful, graceful woman, full of kindness and sadness. Maybe it was just the things she had gone through in that life that had made her that way.

But this just left one question for him—what was he supposed to do with the egg now? The egg had been given to his great grandfather by Yuuko, and had never been used. Should he use it now that Watanuki had this new Yuuko?

"Is she going to be staying here?" Doumeki asked.

"Yes," Watanuki replied. "She made a wish that I restore the memories she's forgotten. The price for that is the same one she asked of me the first time I met her."

"Revenge?" Doumeki guessed, though his voice was still monotone.

"Something like that," Watanuki grinned evilly, though Doumeki couldn't see this because he had turned away.

"Watanuki," he said, "what if you're wrong? What if it turns out this isn't Yuuko?"

"She is, trust me," Watanuki insisted. "I'm not the only one who believes so."

"You mean that American woman?" Doumeki confirmed.

"Don't call her American," Watanuki laughed shortly. "She would kill you if she heard you say that."

"Isn't she from America?" Doumeki pointed out.

"That's just where she lives," Watanuki disagreed, "but either way, yes, Jesse was the one who led me to her."

"And when are you going to restore the things she can't remember?" Doumeki asked.

Watanuki thought before answering. "Probably sooner rather than later. I want her to remember me—there are no rules saying a service can't be provided before the payment or vice versa…or that the service can't be provided in the middle of the payment."

Doumeki hesitated before asking his next question. "What if the things she wants to remember aren't her passed life?" Watanuki looked at him in an almost confused way. "People usually don't have any recollection of past lives. When they do, it's because they already remember them perfectly. I've never heard of a case where a person just has a sense of their passed life."

Watanuki smiled slightly. "Usually I would agree with you, but the thing about Yuuko is that she had lived for a long while with her time stopped. Longer than I have been. Before she disappeared, I told her that I would be waiting here for her for as long as it took for her to come back. It's possible that she only vaguely remembers that promise in this new life."

Doumeki didn't agree or disagree.

"Hey, Watanuki," Yuuko called, coming back into the house. "We're done."

"Good," Watanuki replied, turning to look and smile at her. "So am I."

"Food," Yuuko said happily, and Maru and Moro more or less celebrated with her.

Now that she thought about it, she hadn't eaten anything since she ran away from home—she just now realized that was what she had done. That drug she had taken was going to wear off soon, too, and she knew she could be out for two or three days because of it.

"Something wrong?" Watanuki asked, bringing Yuuko back out of her thoughts.

"Nope," she replied.

Watanuki handed her some plates. "Take those to the table—Doumeki will show you where it is."

Doumeki started walking, carrying a pot of rice, and Yuuko followed him.

"Do you live here too?" she asked him.

"Not really," Doumeki answered. "I'm here a lot, but I have a temple I'm going to inherit."

"Really?" Yuuko giggled. "I guess that's not surprising."

"Why do you say that?" Doumeki asked.

"Because you give off such a pure aura," Yuuko told him.

"Pure, huh," Doumeki repeated, and looked almost like her choice of words confused him.

"Hey, how long have you known Watanuki?" Yuuko wondered.

"Since I was born," Doumeki replied.

That confused Yuuko. "But you look older than him."

"He's always looked the same," Doumeki told her.

"I thought he was around my age," Yuuko said as she put the plates around the table.

"I don't really get it," Doumeki admitted, "but I guess he's been around your age for a long time. More than a hundred years."

"Hey," Watanuki said as he entered the dining room after them, his voice annoyed. He was carrying a platter of white fish and vegetables with him. "Don't go telling her useless things."

"Sorry," Doumeki replied, though didn't sound apologetic at all. "So where did you come from?" He asked Yuuko.

Yuuko didn't answer him right away. She just smiled at him for a second and finally said, "Ikebukuro."

"What school do you go to?" Watanuki asked.

It just occurred to him that as Yuuko was only fifteen now, she would be a high school freshman, and it was only the first week of March, so she would be a second year in April…and when was her birthday? Did she have parents or siblings?

"I don't go to school," Yuuko replied.

"What about your parents?" Doumeki probed.

"They died," Yuuko said.

Watanuki decided to shift the subject at that point—he could tell Yuuko wasn't being entirely honest about something, but that was okay for now. She wouldn't lie for no reason.


	4. Chapter 2 P1

Two-Part One

"Like this?" Yuuko asked.

"Yeah, that's right," Watanuki answered. "Straighten your back, though, you'll be in a better position and it'll make it easier to use more force."

"You're really bossy, huh?" Yuuko complained.

"You're the one who wanted to learn how to bake," Watanuki countered.

They were in the kitchen, and he was standing behind her, trying to show her the best way to kneed bread dough.

"Well, it looks easy when you do it," Yuuko grumbled sulkily. "This is tiring."

"That's just because you're lazy," Watanuki replied pointedly. "Here, let me do it—if we don't hurry, we're going to be late."

"Late!" Maru and Moro laughed as they messed around with flour and milk in their own bowls, sitting on the floor.

"Don't we have to wait for Doumeki to get here, anyway?" Yuuko pointed out, but stood aside nonetheless and let him take over.

"I want to be ready to leave when he gets here, though," Watanuki told her.

"You're so uptight," Yuuko chided. "When I went to America a couple years ago, they had this thing they said: 'go with the flow.' You should try it some time."

"Uptight!" Maru and Moro repeated, still laughing.

"You're too laid back," Watanuki dismissed. Well, it wasn't like that was new—she had always been like that.

"Laid back!" Maru and Moro sang.

"It's too bad you two can't come with us," Yuuko said to them with a sigh.

She hadn't had to ask if they were coming—she knew with just a look that their bodies could only exist within the boundaries of the wards.

"Maru and Moro will nap," they dismissed in unison, cleaned up their mess, and left to go to their special room.

"Hey, Watanuki?"

"Yes?"

"How long has this store and those two been here?" Yuuko asked.

"I don't know," Watanuki admitted. "I inherited the store—it's been here for a long time, though. Maybe centuries."

Yuuko thought about that—it wasn't unbelievable to her. The energy in the place was so old it was almost stagnant. It could easily have been around for a millennium.

So where was the previous owner, then? Obviously this place had been run by an immortal witch before Watanuki, whatever he was, took over. Had they been killed? Yuuko knew that a century ago was when Watanuki became the owner, and she also knew that the world had been in an extremely unstable state at the time. Her teachers had told her all about it.

Yuuko didn't ask Watanuki about it, though. She didn't mind prying, but she didn't want him to start questioning her too much about where she had come from. He had accepted her story about living with relatives she didn't really get along with, and left it at that.

This was Yuuko's second day at the shop. Watanuki had waken her up around ten and told her they were going out to see some old friends of his.

Old being the key word. Apparently they were all more than a hundred and thirty years old.

Watanuki finished kneading the bread and they left it to rise.

"So when is Doumeki going to be here?" Yuuko asked.

"In a few minutes," Watanuki answered.

"I'm going to change, then," Yuuko decided—she had a wardrobe full of new clothes now to play with.

"So am I," Watanuki agreed.

He watched Yuuko go upstairs to her room, smiling, but then the phone rang and he went to pick it up.

"Hello?" He answered.

"Good afternoon," came Jesse's voice.

"Good afternoon," Watanuki replied. "Did you ever get those beads of yours?"

"No, I had to leave the country early," Jesse sighed. "Well, it's not like I can't get them later. If they're so heavily protected, I doubt they'll be moved."

"True," Watanuki agreed.

"So has she come to the shop yet?" Jesse asked.

"She has," Watanuki smiled. "She came here yesterday."

"And what are you going to do with her now?" Jesse probed.

"She wants to stay here," Watanuki replied. "She wants me to restore her memories."

Jesse was silent for a moment. "Can you do that?"

"I can," Watanuki assured her.

"All of them?"

"Certainly."

"Watanuki," Jesse said, "how can you restore memories you don't know?"

"What do you mean?" Watanuki asked.

"Yuuko had a life before you entered it," Jesse pointed out. "A very long life, I might add. How are you going to restore memories you weren't a part of."

Watanuki didn't answer.

He hadn't thought of that—how could he give Yuuko memories from before he was even born? He could unlock the ones he was in…but outside of them, how would he find what else she had forgotten? How would he grant her wish?

"Watanuki?" Jesse said.

"I'm still here," he murmured. "I don't know of any method I could use to unlock the memories I can't touch."

"That may be for the best," Jesse mused. "There were many things Yuuko went through in her last life that she shouldn't need to remember now."

Watanuki didn't speak for a second. "How long have you known Yuuko?"

"You mean when did I meet her in the past?" Jesse asked.

"Yes."

"When she was a very young child," Jesse told him. "There are several of my kind who knew her from that age onward."

"If I asked you to help me unlock Yuuko's knowledge of her abilities, would you?" Watanuki requested.

"Wouldn't that incur your balance payment thing?" Jesse pointed out.

"That doesn't matter," Watanuki said. "I would give anything to get Yuuko's memories back."

"Oh really?" Jesse questioned, and Watanuki could tell she was grinning, wherever she was.

…

Yuuko looked at the contents of the wardrobe as a whole. There were so many colors and materials.

Eventually she grabbed a blue day dress with a pattern of primroses. She found matching shoes—high heeled sandals—and hairclips in one of the wardrobe draws. This store was really very convenient, or maybe considerate would have been a better word.

Once Yuuko was done brushing her hair, she went back downstairs to find Watanuki—who was wearing a shirt and pants that matched her dress' colors, somehow—and Doumeki discussing what was in the large _bento_ boxes in their hands.

"So where are we going again?" She asked.

"My temple," Doumeki answered, and they started walking out the door. "Well, it's still my great grandfather's temple, to be accurate."

"Really?" Yuuko smiled. "I bet it's full of energy like yours."

"It is," Watanuki agreed. "At least, that's what I'm told."

"You've never been there?" Yuuko questioned.

"Not for a long time," Watanuki hedged. "The last time I was there, I didn't know how to do all the things I do now. This will be like seeing through new eyes, I guess."

"Why haven't you gone there for so long?" Yuuko probed, and hooked her arm around his.

Watanuki hesitated—tell her the truth or dodge her question?

"I haven't been able to leave the shop," he decided on. "This will be my first time beyond that fence in decades."

Watanuki looked at it as the three of them walked steadily closer and closer, and closed his eyes as they walked through the gate. He could feel the difference. He could breathe the impure air, he could hear the cars and people, he could feel the pavement under his shoes. He could feel his time start to move again.

Yuuko's arm was still around his, and he placed his hand over hers with a content smile. She looked up at him questioningly, but didn't let go of him—he just looked so happy, like he thought all was right with the world.

It was then that Yuuko began to wonder exactly who "Yuuko" had been to him.


	5. Chapter 2 P2

Two-Part Two

The entire time they were walking, Yuuko was worried about a big blue SUV or red Ferrari or black Prius pulling up next to them. What would Watanuki do if her teachers found her and told him she had run away?

"The city sure has changed a lot," Watanuki commented as he looked around the skyscrapers and raised train tracks.

"How so?" Yuuko asked.

"New buildings," Watanuki shrugged. "They're taller, and there are quite a few more than there had been."

Yuuko wasn't sure how to respond to that—he didn't seem either excited or displeased about it—so she chose to ignore it. "How much further is it?"

"That's the gate over there," Doumeki said, and nodded toward a large gated fence one block away.

Yuuko looked at the space the above the fenced off area—it was pure, she thought. Purer than most places were anymore. Almost everything those days was eroded away by the uncontrolled energy and emotions of humans. Things were innocently and ignorantly corrupted and left like that.

"Hey," Watanuki said, as though a thought had suddenly occurred to him. "They know we're coming, right?"

"Yeah," Doumeki assured him. "I guess Grandpa Shizuka saw something strange through his right eye yesterday, and when he told Grandma Kohane about it, she said you would want to come to the temple. I was told to invite you, but then you called me first thing in the morning anyway."

"So Watanuki's friends are your grandparents?" Yuuko asked as they crossed through the gate.

"His great grandparents," Watanuki corrected.

"Why don't they just come to the shop if they want to see you?" Yuuko asked.

"It's hard to move around when you're more than a hundred years old," Watanuki pointed out. "Even with modern medicine and medical advances, there's no cure for aging."

"You're the same age as them, though," Yuuko confirmed. "So why didn't you age?"

Watanuki didn't answer her. They entered the main temple, then, and Doumeki led them into an inner garden where five old people were sitting at a round table.

"Himawari," Watanuki said, surprised. "Sakura, Syaoran, what are you all doing here?"

"We live here," Syaoran reminded him.

"I called Himawari," Kohane told him.

They were all looking at Yuuko, though.

"Hi," she said brightly, completely ignoring the uncertain atmosphere. "So you're Watanuki's friends, huh?"

"Yes," the one Watanuki had referred to as Himawari answered. "It's nice that you could both come—we're all too old to go out much anymore."

Yuuko looked at her, and at the little bird on her shoulder, half hidden in her loose, white hair. The bird seemed to be made purely of emotion—Yuuko could sense that that emotion was Watanuki's. The old woman herself was shrouded in a cloud of misfortune. Was she cursed?

It was obvious which of the old men Doumeki's great grandfather was, they looked and felt exactly alike, and the woman sitting close to him, the one who had called Himawari, had to be his great grandmother. She gave off a strange feeling, not unlike Watanuki's.

The last two were even stranger. They were obviously "Sakura and Syaoran," but they felt more like Maru and Moro than normal humans…except that they definitely had souls. They were giving off auras of their own. They weren't golems, then, so what were they?

And why did they make Yuuko almost…sad?

They were looking at her with kind smiles, as though their eyes were telling her they accepted her very being for what it was. Did they know something? Yuuko doubted the man could use magic, but the woman was overflowing with energy similar to her own.

She wasn't a witch, though. There was no way these two were actually human.

"And your name is Yuuko?" Himawari asked, and Yuuko looked at her again.

"That's what this weirdo started calling me," she laughed, indicating Watanuki who she was still holding onto, "so I guess that's what I'm going to go by for now."

Yuuko didn't notice the look that flashed through their eyes—surprise, doubt, worry…Watanuki knew what was coming.

He, Yuuko and Doumeki joined them at the table, and Yuuko chatted with the old women about trivial things like clothes and celebrities. Watanuki and Syaoran talked lightly about the store and other friends in different worlds. Doumeki and his grandfather remained silent, and this went on for about an hour until Doumeki stood and said he would get more tea and _sake_. Shizuka went with him.

They both continued to be silent until they reached the storehouse.

"Is that really the Yuuko you and Grandma told me about?" Doumeki asked.

"I don't know," Shizuka admitted. "Watanuki obviously believes she is. She acts pretty much the same, except that Yuuko would have been drinking _sake_ rather than tea."

"She's only fifteen, apparently," Doumeki said.

"That doesn't matter," Shizuka dismissed, and started looking around for the specific _sakes_ he remembered Yuuko had liked.

Doumeki took the egg out of his pocket and looked at it before speaking again. "You told me to carry this around with me since you're too old to leave the temple freely," he said. "I think that if this egg breaks, Watanuki will forget about the Yuuko from the past."

"You've told me that before," Shizuka commented. "Why do you think that?"

"I just get the feeling that his memories are stored in this," Doumeki told him. "The Sakura and Syaoran out there told me once that they're Watanuki's parents, but he doesn't remember them like that anymore. They said he paid his memories of them and pretty much everyone and everything else as a price for a wish. If the memories of his parents can be taken away, isn't it just as possible to take away his memories of the Yuuko from the past?"

Shizuka stopped rummaging around the bottles, sighed and looked at his grandson. "Yuuko gave me that egg, and told me it was my decision when to use it, though she never told me what it would do. All she said was that nothing would be born from it. I gave it to you to decide because I never came to a decision."

"So if I asked you what you think I should do?" Doumeki probed.

"I would tell you it's up to you," Shizuka said. "Maybe your grandmother can give you the kind of advice you're looking for."

Doumeki looked at the egg for a long moment, but put it back in his pocket.

…

"So if you're Doumeki's great grandmother," Yuuko said, "where're his parents and grandparents?"

"Yuuko," Watanuki half scolded, but Kohane smiled and shook her head.

"My and Shizuka's daughter never married," she said, "but had our grandson, and she died shortly afterward. He and his wife died when Kenichi was very young."

"Oh," Yuuko mumbled, and looked down. She hadn't felt any sense of grief from any of them, so she had figured they were all out somewhere.

Though now that Kohane said it, it occurred to Yuuko that she hadn't known the youngest Doumeki's given name. Well, she supposed it didn't matter. She wasn't going to do anything with that name, and she wasn't going to start calling him that anyway.

"Kimihiro," Kohane continued, looking at him, "would you mind going to the kitchen and getting the snacks I made earlier?"

"Certainly," Watanuki agreed.

"I'll go too," Syaoran decided.

"That's okay," Watanuki tried to say, but the smile Syaoran gave him was clearly saying, "Don't treat me like an old man."

Yuuko watched them go, and then looked again at the old women in front of her. "So you've all known Watanuki a long time?"

"Yes, we have," Sakura nodded.

"Then do you guys know who 'Yuuko' is?" She asked.

Sakura, Kohane and Himawari all glanced around at each other.

"She was a very important person to all of us," Sakura eventually said.

"But it's not our place to tell you anything beyond that," Kohane added.

Yuuko tilted her head to the side curiously, but didn't pry any further.

"Yuuko," Kohane continued, "may I ask you a question."

"Sure," Yuuko agreed cheerily, "but I might not answer it."

The three old women laughed quietly for a moment. "What is your real name?"

…

"You're sure that's her?" Syaoran asked as they walked along the temple hall.

"I'm sure," Watanuki answered. "I wouldn't have left the shop if I wasn't."

"That's true," Syaoran chuckled lightly. "I'm glad that you were able to come out before my and Sakura's time ended."

"Don't talk like that," Watanuki said. "You and Sakura are both only about fifty years old now, right?"

"That's how long it's been since we got our own bodies again," Syaoran allowed.

"I wonder how they're doing," Watanuki mused. "The other Sakura and Syaoran, and those two you were traveling with."

"I'm sure they're fine," Syaoran said. "Sakura can meet with her other self in dreams. Fai stayed in Kurogane's world, though, after I got my own body again, so I don't know about them."

"Because after it became no longer necessary for you to move from place to place, the Mokonas disappeared," Watanuki murmured, his voice a bit sad.

He had woken up one day to find that Mokona was nowhere in the shop. It had taken seeing Syaoran and Sakura again for him to understand what had happened. Now they stayed at Doumeki's temple and helped out, since Shizuka and Kohane were now too old to do most things.

Watanuki and Yuuko stayed until the sun went down, but then had to go back to the shop. Watanuki didn't want to leave Maru and Moro alone overnight.

"We'll come back to visit soon," Watanuki assured Kohane for the last time, waving as he and Yuuko left.

Yuuko waited until they were outside the boundaries of the gate to say, "It's good that you have friends."

"What do you mean?" Watanuki asked.

"I had pegged you for a guy who didn't have any," Yuuko told him, and then laughed at the infuriated yell Watanuki had in response, making people stare.

* * *

><p>Author's Note:<p>

Please point out any errors you might notice. I don't have a beta, and I know it's easy for an author to miss things when rereading their own work.


	6. Chapter 3 P1

Three-Part One

_We're trying to protect you._

Yuuko opened her eyes—what an annoying dream to wake up to. She slid out of bed and changed into a plain green kimono.

It had been a few days, now, that Yuuko had been staying in the shop and nothing much had happened. Watanuki had told her that he would grant her wish in exchange for "service," but all he asked her to do were things like helping with chores and food shopping. Yuuko wasn't used to doing anything that would be considered a "chore," though, so she wasn't much help with that anyway.

Watanuki didn't seem to mind, though. He got annoyed and angry easily, but not deeply. He never looked at her with impatience or anything like it.

Yuuko looked out the window—the sun had just barely come up. She went downstairs, but there were no noises or the smell of food cooking. Watanuki wasn't awake yet.

She went into his room quietly, trying to be as discreet as possible. She hadn't seen him sleeping before—his face was significantly less annoying without those glasses. He was actually pretty cute.

She poked his cheek.

"Watanuki," she said, and continued poking him because he wouldn't open his eyes. "Hey, it's morning. Make me breakfast."

He still wouldn't wake up.

Yuuko made a sulky expression. She knew he was a dream seer—maybe he was dreaming.

She grinned mischievously. He had wriggled his way into her dream without her permission. Why shouldn't she do the same to him?

She slipped onto his bed and half lied down on top of him, placing her hands on his cheeks and pressed her forehead against his. She wondered if he could feel her ample breasts against his chest.

She ignored that feeling herself and went in, entering his mind as easily as entering the store. This was a trick one of her teachers had taught her—and one that she had always been reprimanded for using.

Watanuki's dream was dark at first, but then Yuuko could make out a field of flowers. They were daffodils, but not normal ones. They were whispering.

"Hey," Yuuko said as she bent down, looking at the closest one. "Did an annoying guy come through here?"

"Yes," the daffodil replied. "He comes here every now and then. He used to be so loud, but not so much anymore."

"Really?" Yuuko questioned. "I think he's plenty loud. Can you tell me where he is now?"

"Follow his energy," the daffodil said. "He only comes here to cross into a different place."

"Really?" Yuuko muttered.

She stood straight and looked around. This place was full of pure energy—it was similar to the Doumeki's. It was easy to pick Watanuki's energy out of it, and so she did follow it. The trail left the place with the daffodils and led to another—it was a forest of some kind. Watanuki's energy wasn't so easy to follow here.

She heard his voice, though, and running water.

Around some bushes, Yuuko saw him sitting next to a girl on a rock above a river. The girl wasn't human—she looked like a zashiki-warashi.

Yuuko couldn't hear them clearly enough to know what they were saying, but the zashiki-warashi said something, then Watanuki said something, and then they both laughed. The zashiki-warashi looked happy, and a bit flushed.

Woman's intuition told her that this zashiki-warashi was quite taken with Watanuki.

She noticed Yuuko, then—well it wasn't like she was trying to hide, anyway. Watanuki looked at her, too.

"Yuuko," he said, surprised. "When did you get here? Actually, _how_ did you get here?"

"Oh, I'm sorry," Yuuko replied teasingly, "I didn't mean to interrupt your date."

The zashiki-warashi's face turned so red it looked like her blood might start leaking out of her nose.

"Yuuko," Watanuki sighed, also blushing slightly, "this is my friend—she's a zashiki-warashi."

"I'm not blind," Yuuko said, and walked over to the edge of the river, though didn't hop across the rocks to join them. "Where is this place?"

"This is Reisan," Zashiki-Warashi said. "The karasu tengu and I live here."

"I see," Yuuko muttered as she glanced around more. "And what are you doing here, Watanuki?"

"That's what I should be asking you," Watanuki replied pointedly as he slid off the rock and helped Zashiki-Warashi down.

"I tried to wake you up," Yuuko told him, "but you wouldn't, so I came to find out why. This is quite a distance for your soul to travel."

"I asked him to come," Zashiki-Warashi said, as if Watanuki were in trouble. Yuuko looked at her as they joined her on the river bank, obviously asking why. "Something of mine has been stolen."

"And she's asked me to get it back for her," Watanuki elaborated.

"Why don't you just get it back yourself?" Yuuko asked, merely curious.

"I can't leave the mountain very much anymore," Zashiki-Warashi mumbled.

"Oh," Yuuko nodded, "because negative energy is poisonous to a zashiki-warashi, and that's pretty much what the human world is full of."

Zashiki-Warashi nodded. "I had heard that you were…new to the store," she said, and smiled slightly. "How do you like it?"

"It's fun," Yuuko replied, and returned her smile.

"That's good," Zashiki-Warashi murmured, and looked up at Watanuki. "The karasu tengu should be back soon."

"We'd better get out of here, then," Watanuki agreed, and his expression took on an almost annoyed look.

"What, you don't like them?" Yuuko asked.

"They don't like me," Watanuki corrected. "Every time they see me, they try to hit me with a paper fan."

Yuuko laughed at him, and Zashiki-Warashi giggled shortly.

"I'll have your payment ready for you by tomorrow," Zashiki-Warashi continued as she looked up at Watanuki again.

"It might take me a bit longer to find it," Watanuki warned her, "but I'll find it as soon as I can."

"Thank you," Zashiki-Warashi said, and bowed slightly before the scene disappeared entirely.

Yuuko and Watanuki opened their eyes at the same time. Watanuki propped himself up on his elbows, but Yuuko didn't move—she felt a little dizzy from more or less forcing her soul out of her body.

"Yuuko," Watanuki said.

"Yeah?"

"Why did you invade my dream?"

"You invaded mine first," Yuuko dismissed, though she still didn't move. She could feel Watanuki's temperature rising, though she wasn't sure if it was because he was mad or because she was lying on top of him. The thought of either made her grin.


	7. Chapter 3 P2

Three-Part Two

Watanuki was still red faced and glaring at nothing as he and Yuuko ate breakfast, and she was still entertained by it. Neither of them were speaking, but the silence was filled by Maru's and Moro's playing.

It wasn't until it was time to clean the dishes that Yuuko asked, "So what did that zashiki-warashi want you to find?"

"Her flute," Watanuki replied as he started washing.

"Flute?" Yuuko repeated.

"One that she's had for a long time," Watanuki elaborated, and handed her the dish to dry it. "She plays it a lot—or she used to, until it got stolen."

"How long ago was it stolen?" Yuuko asked.

"A couple weeks ago, she said," Watanuki answered. "She thought she had just misplaced it at first, but she looked all over the mountain for it. Even the karasu tengu who take care of her couldn't find it."

"I heard that karasu tengu are like the mafia," Yuuko commented.

"You heard right," Watanuki muttered, thinking about their sunglasses and black jackets. "At any rate, she finally figured out that it had to have been stolen, so she sent me a note to ask me if I could come see her."

"I see," Yuuko nodded. "And why did you go through that world with the daffodil nymphs?"

"What do you mean?" Watanuki asked.

"When I asked the daffodils if they'd seen you," Yuuko explained, "they said that you went there every now and then, but only to cross over into that Reisan place. Why not just go there directly?"

Watanuki thought about his answer for a moment as he finished the last plate and handed it to her for drying.

"The first time I went there, it was through an urn connected to the place with the daffodil nymphs," he eventually said, "so it's just easier for me to go through there when it's only my soul."

"Why didn't you just go there directly?" Yuuko asked. "You can physically leave this place now, right?"

"That's true," Watanuki agreed, but didn't say anything else.

In truth, he hadn't gone physically because he didn't want to bring Yuuko with him, and he knew she would have demanded to go as well. He had wanted to warn Zashiki-Warashi and the karasu tengu that Yuuko was back, but didn't remember anything…yet.

He and Yuuko left the kitchen, and she followed him all the way to the storehouse.

"So how do you intend to find this flute?" Yuuko asked as he watched him look around.

"Well, first I have to find out who took it and why," Watanuki replied.

"Okay, then how are you going to do that?" Yuuko revised.

She figured he didn't intend to follow the thief's energy, seeing as they didn't know exactly where the flute was taken from and he didn't seem to be planning on physically going back to Reisan to find out. The zashiki-warashi hadn't given him anything that could be used as a lead, so that option was out as well.

"With this," Watanuki said, and he pulled a small wooden box from the shelf he had been searching.

"What is it?" Yuuko probed.

Watanuki hopped off the stepping stool and opened it—inside, resting on a little white cushion, was a small, really old looking figurine made of wood. Yuuko wasn't sure what it was supposed to be at first, but after she took it out and looked at it closely, she thought it might be a crow.

"We'll start with the why," Watanuki said.

"Why they took it?" Yuuko clarified.

"This was made from the same tree branch as Zashiki-Warashi's flute," Watanuki explained.

"Then can't you just use this to find it?" Yuuko pointed out.

"It's not like DNA," Watanuki disagreed. "You're thinking of how a witch or shaman can use hair or blood or something to find the human or animal it belongs to, right? You can't do that with plants, especially ones that have been dead for more than a hundred years."

Yuuko made a sulky noise—she didn't like being wrong in any conceivable way. "So then what use is this?"

"This," Watanuki said as he took the crow figurine back and started walking back to the main store, "will tell me if there's anything in the wood itself that the thief wanted."

"Isn't it more likely they took it because it belongs to a zashiki-warashi?" Yuuko suggested. "If she had it for so long, there's probably a lot of her energy stored in it. A zashiki-warashi brings luck, so it could probably be used as a good luck charm."

"You're probably right," Watanuki allowed, "but it's best to make sure."

"Why?" Yuuko raised her eyebrow.

"Because it's also possible that someone who cares about Zashiki-Warashi is trying to protect her," Watanuki replied. "This and her flute were made from a thousand year old cherry tree—I figured that out after receiving this crow. In all that time, that tree probably absorbed a lot of negative energy and human blood spilt from war battles."

"Why would a zashiki-warashi have something with negative energy?" Yuuko questioned.

"There might not have been any stored in that flute," Watanuki said, "but at the same time, it might have been so subtle that no one noticed. I don't know who gave her the flute, so I can't really guess at their intentions."

"So what are you going to do with that little thing?" Yuuko indicated the wooden crow.

"Watch," Watanuki instructed.

He had led her to a room that was empty except for a short, round table in the center, on which was a shallow basin full of water. Watanuki took something out of his kimono sleeve—glass with a magic circle on it. Yuuko recognized that magic circle—she had seen it in her teacher's books, and each time she looked at it, it filled her with annoyance bordering on anger. Why did Watanuki have it? It was supposed to only be usable to a family in China.

Watanuki placed the glass circle in the basin, and then put the crow in as well. It didn't float, like Yuuko thought it would—was the liquid not water, then?

She sat down across from Watanuki and watched as he placed his fingertips on the water—or whatever it was—and started feeding his energy into it. After a couple seconds, the crow seemed to be reacting. It began to more or less glow a light golden brown against the bluish green color of the basin.

After another few seconds, a "Hmm," came from Watanuki's lips and he took his fingers away from the water.

"What?" Yuuko asked.

"You might have been right when you said the thief just wanted Zashiki-Warashi's energy," Watanuki said. "I thought that maybe Ame-Warashi had taken it because she's seemed worried about Zashiki-Warashi lately, but…"

"You know a rain maker, too?" Yuuko questioned, eyebrow raised.

"She also lives on Reisan," Watanuki told her. "Zashiki-Warashi mentioned that she hadn't seen Ame-Warashi for a while, either."

"If you suspected a specific person, why not say so from the start?" Yuuko asked, slightly annoyed—what a waste of energy.

"You didn't ask," Watanuki replied, and his smile told Yuuko that this was him getting back at her for following him to Reisan like that.

"So now what?"

"Now I guess we'll have to find out the exact 'why' when we find the flute itself," Watanuki said. "We'll have to go straight to finding the thief."

"Which you will do how?" Yuuko asked.

"I still get the feeling Ame-Warashi knows something about this," Watanuki hedged.

"So you're going to find her?" Yuuko clarified.

"I am," Watanuki nodded.

He put the crow back into its box but left the glass circle where it was, stood, and left. Yuuko followed him again, wondering if he was going to do something useful this time or just waste more energy.

All he did, though, was go into his room and grab a bamboo pipe off a stand.

Yuuko noticed a second pipe—a red and gold _kiseru_ pipe she had overlooked earlier. She picked it up.

"Is this yours, Watanuki?" she asked.

Watanuki glanced at what was in her hand, and then did a double take. "It was the previous owner's," he hedged.

"So you don't smoke?" Yuuko confirmed.

Watanuki looked at her. "Do you disapprove of smoking?"

"It doesn't bother me," Yuuko said, "it just doesn't seem like the kind of thing an uptight guy like you would do."

"Uptight?" Watanuki repeated, annoyed again.

"You can't tell me no one else has ever called you that before," Yuuko grinned teasingly.

Watanuki didn't say anything—of course people had called him that.

Yuuko put the kiseru pipe back down and looked at the one in Watanuki's hand. "So what are you going to do with that?"

Watanuki took the end the pipe off and after a second, a bit of hair started coming out. At first, Yuuko thought it was the yellowish white bristles of a brush, but then it kept coming and coming until a three foot snake of fur was twisting around Watanuki's arm. It slivered until it was settled around his neck.

"Is that a pipe fox?" Yuuko asked.

"It is," Watanuki answered. "His name is Mugetsu. He was with Ame-Warashi for a long time—he should be able to find her."


	8. Chapter 3 P3

Three-Part Three

Yuuko wondered at first why no one was staring at Mugetsu. A three foot furry snake seemed rather conspicuous to her, but no one they passed on the street so much as blinked. Didn't they notice the pipe fox leaning out in front of Watanuki's neck, telling them which way to go?

Then as someone almost ran right into her—granted, he seemed to be pretty drunk, but still—a thought occurred to Yuuko.

"Can anyone see us?" She asked.

"Yes and no," Watanuki answered. "I'm not really good at illusions—the most I can do is shroud us in a charm. They can see us, but they don't really notice us or Mugetsu."

"Illusions aren't that hard," Yuuko said.

"Maybe not for you," Watanuki allowed.

Yuuko looked up at Tokyo Tower as they passed it. She had her arm around Watanuki's, just like the first time they had gone walking with Doumeki, and he seemed perfectly content again. She wanted and tried to ask him about "Yuuko" a few times since then, but something kept stopping her.

"How long are we going to keep walking?" She eventually questioned.

"Until we get to wherever Ame-Warashi is," Watanuki replied.

"What if she's all the way in Okinawa or something?" Yuuko pointed out.

"If she weren't close by, Mugetsu would have changed forms," Watanuki dismissed.

"What do you mean?"

"He doesn't always look like this," Watanuki explained, and ran his finger over Mugetsu's head. "He can turn into a nine tailed fox."

"And what?" Yuuko raised her eyebrow. "Carry us on his back?"

"Well, he probably could," Watanuki allowed, but didn't elaborate.

Yuuko made an annoyed face—they had already been walking for over an hour. She was about to start complaining about this, but she noticed a shift in the atmosphere.

"Did you feel that?" She asked.

"Yes," Watanuki answered, and his voice took on a serious tone. "It looks like we're going to have to enter a different space."

"I've never done that before," Yuuko admitted.

"It's not hard," Watanuki promised her. "All you have to do is go in and not resist."

Yuuko looked up at him doubtfully, but didn't question. They were in a park, walking along a trail and passing families with small children. Eventually Mugetsu pointed away from the main trail and to one that led them to the back sides of buildings. It wasn't exactly a horrible part of town, but even in the early afternoon, wondering around alley ways didn't seem like a good idea.

Humans weren't something Yuuko was afraid of, but she had seen how troublesome they could get.

Watanuki stopped, and Yuuko followed his gaze. The alley they were in was devoid of people, and he was looking at a broken stone arch. It obviously wasn't part of the architecture. The space in the arch was distorted, though—if it weren't broken, it could probably serve as a gateway of a kind.

"This is interesting," Watanuki muttered.

"What do you mean?" Yuuko asked.

"I have no idea where this thing came from."

Yuuko couldn't help but grin. "So you don't know everything?" She teased.

"I never said I did," Watanuki replied pointedly.

Yuuko giggled. "So now what?"

"Now we go through," Watanuki said, and started walking toward the archway again.

Yuuko followed him, still keeping a firm grip on his arm, but had to point out, "It's broken, though."

"That may be why it's here," Watanuki said. "It wasn't here before—what we felt a few minutes ago was probably this thing appearing in this space. If we go through it, we should be able to find out where it came from."

"What does this have to do with that zashiki-warashi's flute?" Yuuko asked.

"We'll have to find out," Watanuki answered.

"Going through a broken gate doesn't seem like a good idea to me," Yuuko said.

"It's probably not," Watanuki agreed, "but this is the way to Ame-Warashi. This may be bigger than someone just trying to take Zashiki-Warashi's luck."

Yuuko didn't reply. She and Watanuki walked under the archway, and they both felt the difference—they had left one space and crossed to another.

The place they had crossed over to was grassy and full of trees. A short ways away, they could see a beach with crystal white sand and water that sparkled in the setting sun. Yuuko looked up at the arch—it was obviously a twin set, and this one was broken in the same place as the one in Tokyo.

Yuuko looked up at Watanuki—he was looking around curiously. He had obviously never been here before. Should she tell him she had? Should she tell him where they were? She really didn't want to deal with the questions he would probably ask…

"Mugetsu?" Watanuki said, looking down at him.

Mugetsu began to glow and Yuuko watched as he turned into the nine tailed fox Watanuki had described. It was a bit amazing to see for the first time.

The fox started walking away from the beach and to a thinner part of the forest. After a couple minutes, they came to a wide river. In the distance, they could just barely see a stone structure, but they didn't go further.

"Where is she?" Watanuki asked Mugetsu.

The pipe fox made a slight whining noise and looked down into the river. There, Watanuki could see what he was looking at. Yuuko watched him reach down into the water quickly, and what he pulled out was a girl—obviously an ame-warashi.

"Is she okay?" Yuuko asked, and bent down next to them.

Rather than answer her, Watanuki started feeding his energy into Ame-Warashi's chest. After a couple seconds, she opened her eyes and looked uncomprehendingly first at Watanuki, then at Yuuko.

"What are you doing here?" She asked Watanuki.

"Zashiki-Warashi asked me to find her flute," Watanuki told her. "She said it was stolen—you've been missing for a couple weeks as well."

"Have I?" Ame-Warashi muttered, looking annoyed. She sat up and patted Mugetsu absently as he nudged his head against hers.

"What happened?" Watanuki asked.

"Where's my parasol?" Ame-Warashi wondered, glancing around for it.

"I don't know," Watanuki said.

"Then what am I going to hit you with?" Ame-Warashi half yelled, as though Watanuki was the one who lost it.

Yuuko might have started laughing, but she got the feeling this wasn't the time.

"Do you know who took Zashiki-Warashi's flute?" Watanuki asked, exasperated.

"I did," Ame-Warashi hissed. "I purify it every couple decades—something jumped me."

"Who?" Watanuki probed.

"I don't know," Ame-Warashi snapped. She used Mugetsu to help herself stand.

"Do you know why someone would want it?" Yuuko asked.

Ame-Warashi looked at her. "I'd heard that you were back," she said, and Yuuko raised her eyebrow.

"Do you?" Watanuki insisted before Ame-Warashi could say anything else.

"Why do you think?" She countered. "Good luck in an object full of regret? Obviously someone wants to use it for something."

Watanuki thought for a moment—who or what would have use for that?

"Could you tell me where you were attacked?" Watanuki requested.

Ame-Warashi sighed like he was asking something unreasonable. "Follow me."

Yuuko and Watanuki glanced at each other unsurely, but did as she said. None of them spoke, and Ame-Warashi was scowling the entire way—she actually looked like she was kind of in pain. After a couple minutes she sat sidesaddle on Mugetsu's back, and it was obvious how labored her breathing was.

"Maybe we should stop," Watanuki suggested, worried.

"I'll be fine when I get back to Reisan," Ame-Warashi shook her head. "This is more important."

"It's just a flute," Yuuko disagreed, and Ame-Warashi glared at her.

"It's not so much about the flute as what someone could be doing with it," Watanuki explained. "Things have finally settled down after a lot of conflict all over the world—someone or something could be trying to start something again."

Yuuko would have asked him to explain that, but Mugetsu stopped. Watanuki walked a few more steps, and picked something up—the flute.

Or was it? There was no trace of a zashiki-warashi anywhere on it.

"I guess this confirms it," Watanuki muttered.

"What?" Yuuko asked.

"Someone's trying to start something," Watanuki said. "Whoever they are, they sucked out every bit of energy that was stored in this."

…

Yuuko and Watanuki took Ame-Warashi back to where the archway had been, but they discovered it was gone. Watanuki had to use his own magic to transport them back to the shop, and they waited there for a couple days to go back to Reisan. Ame-Warashi needed to recover—even a rain maker would suffer repercussions from being submerged in a river for two weeks.

On the second night, they went to Reisan. They used the same urn Yuuko had to first send Watanuki to the daffodil nymphs, and had to wait for the full moon to do it.

Yuuko watched as Mugetsu turned back into his smaller form, and watched as Watanuki gave the zashiki-warashi her flute. She thanked him for it, and for helping the ame-warashi. She gave Watanuki the payment, though Yuuko couldn't see what it was, and they left.

Well, left really wasn't the right way to put it. They more or less teleported out, and ended up in the bath back at the shop.

Once there, they both sighed and leaned back against the edges of the tub.

"You've had a serious look on your face since we got that flute back," Yuuko commented. "What's going through your head?"

"I just don't like not knowing what's going on," Watanuki said. He didn't tell her that the reason he didn't like not knowing was because he feared whatever it was, it might take her from him again. "I'm glad that Zashiki-Warashi called for me—if she hadn't, Ame-Warashi might have died—but I wish she had done it sooner. Then we might have been able to catch whoever had attacked Ame-Warashi. I really wish I knew what they're going to use that energy for…"

Yuuko could tell how troubled Watanuki was by this. They were on opposite sides of the tub, both ignoring the fact that their clothes were now soaked through, and Yuuko moved over to Watanuki's side. She leaned her head against his shoulder and wrapped her arms around his torso. That was all the comfort she could offer him.

* * *

><p>Author's Note:<p>

I'm personally not entirely satisfied with how this went along, but after rewriting it three times I figure this is about as happy with it as I'm going to get. What do you guys think?


	9. Chapter 4

Four

Yuuko was watering the garden with Maru and Moro again. Watanuki seemed to enjoy watching her do that while he made lunch—she had already called him a creepy stalker for it on more than one occasion.

"Mistress," Maru and Moro called at the same time, and she looked behind herself to find them crouching next to some rose bushes. "Look!"

Yuuko knelt down next to them to see what they were pointing at—a butterfly chrysalis hanging off some thorns.

"I wonder what kind it'll be," she said excitedly.

She was actually going to go ask Watanuki to see if he knew, but she saw something in her peripheral vision—people. "Welcome to—" she began to say, but when she faced them she found it was just Doumeki carrying a wrapped up bottle of wine…and there was a woman with him.

She definitely wasn't his girlfriend. Although she was very pretty, she was also at least six feet tall. Yuuko wondered if she was a runway model. She was skinny enough to be, and that was accentuated by the lacy, turtleneck gray dress she was wearing.

She didn't seem exactly human, though. She was actually very similar to a friend of her teacher's—this woman was probably a sorceress, then.

Then Yuuko realized something—she had met this woman once before, when she was very young. That was bad—what if she told Watanuki about her teachers?

She didn't seem to recognize Yuuko, though. Maybe she had forgotten their encounter. Maybe if Yuuko acted like she had never met this woman, no one would be any the wiser.

It took less than a second for all this to go through Yuuko's head, and after it did she said, "Hi Doumeki—who's your friend?"

"She's not with me," Doumeki replied. "We just came in at the same time."

"You really tell it like it is, don't you?" Yuuko sighed. "You're not as fun as Watanuki."

"Sorry for not being fun," Doumeki said, though didn't sound like he cared in the slightest, and continued up the path to the shop.

"If you're here, then you have a wish, right?" Yuuko asked the woman, ignoring Doumeki now. "You're here to see Watanuki?"

"I am," she nodded, looking at Maru and Moro as they danced around her. "I don't exactly have what I would call a wish, though—it's more of a request."

Yuuko smiled and led her into the shop. Yep—definitely didn't remember her. She led the woman into one of the western styled sitting rooms and went to go tell Watanuki. She found him and Doumeki in the kitchen. Watanuki was making tea, obviously for the customer, and Doumeki was already munching on the vegetable sticks that were supposed to be with lunch.

"Did you ask the costumer's name?" Watanuki asked.

"No," Yuuko answered, her tone mocking. "She seems like she's been here before, though."

"What does she look like?" Watanuki revised with an aggravated sigh.

"Really tall, pale skin, long black hair, purple eyes," Yuuko described.

"Raiden," Watanuki muttered, surprised.

"Raiden?" Yuuko repeated. "As in the God of Lightning?"

"Yes, that's her," Watanuki nodded.

"I've never heard of Raiden being depicted as a woman," Yuuko commented, "or as looking even remotely like a human."

"Gods can look however they want," Watanuki dismissed.

"That's true," Yuuko allowed—she couldn't really tell him that "Raiden" wasn't actually a god. She would have to tell him how she knew.

"Yuuko," Watanuki said as he picked up a small plate of cookies, and she looked up at him. "Carry the tea tray for me."

Yuuko did what he asked, though she was thinking _I am not a maid_ at him over and over again as they walked to the room she had left the customer in.

"Lady Raiden," Watanuki greeted as they entered the room.

"Good afternoon, Watanuki," Raiden replied, and bowed her head slightly in a polite gesture.

Watanuki put the cookies on the table, Yuuko started pouring the tea and they both sat down. Yuuko never asked Watanuki if he didn't want her to sit in on his meetings with his customers. She just did it of her own volition, and no one had objected yet. Raiden didn't seem to mind, either.

"So how have you been doing?" Watanuki asked. "It's been at least twenty years since you last visited."

"Time certainly does fly," Raiden agreed. "That child I walked in with is the same one I met here last time, isn't he? He was barely more than a baby then." She and Watanuki both laughed shortly. "Things have been steady where I live, though, and that's a luxury to be relished these days."

"Indeed," Watanuki murmured. "How are your sisters?"

"They're all just fine," Raiden said, though her voice had a "for the most part" tone to it. "We heard recently that you've started leaving this store—I'm glad to see it's true."

Watanuki smiled in response to that. "So what brings you here today?"

"Well, it's about Raiju," Raiden said. "He's gone missing. He decided to descend from the sky to see what's become of the human world, but hasn't come back—it's been almost three months now."

"Raiju?" Yuuko repeated curiously. "He's a little lightning cat, right?"

"He doesn't look like a cat," Watanuki corrected, making a face at the memory of his first encounter with the lightning manipulator Raiju—he had been out looking at refrigerators with Yuuko, and Raiju had been pulled in by the magnetic waves of the electronics. Watanuki had been electrocuted by him at least five times before he went back to the sky. "He was probably pulled into a power plant or something."

"Probably," Raiden agreed, "but I can't find him anywhere no matter how much I look. Would you get him back for me?"

"If you can't find him…" Watanuki began, but then remembered something—one of the things in the storeroom. "Sure, I'll bring him here. In exchange…"

"I brought this with me," Raiden said, and she indicated the necklace she was wearing. It was a simple one, just a delicate silver chain with a small, lily shaped pendant encrusted with several little amethysts.

"That's a bit much," Watanuki tried to say, but Raiden shook her head with a smile.

"Not for Raiju," she said.

"Alright," Watanuki agreed hesitantly. He looked out at the clear sky. "Would you be able to make a storm? It would make pulling him away from wherever he is easier."

"I need clouds to make lightning," Raiden hedged. "I suppose I could call my sister out here."

"You mean Fujin?" Watanuki asked.

"Yes," Raiden nodded.

"We'll get started when she gets here, then," Watanuki smiled. "Yuuko, help me with these."

He meant the empty tea pot and cups than had been drunk through the course of the conversation. Once again, she did as he asked, though glanced back at Raiden unsurely as they left the room again.

"How long is it going to take her sister to get her?" Yuuko asked.

"She'll be there by the time we go back to that room," Watanuki answered.

Indeed, by the time he and Yuuko had put the tea and cookie dishes in the sink and went back to the room, another woman was there—one who was equally tall and slim, but with almost white hair and orange eyes. She didn't seem to recognize Yuuko, either.

"Hello, Lady Fujin," Watanuki greeted.

"Hi," Fujin replied. She seemed particularly agitated about something. "Let's get this over with—I have things I need to take care of."

"Certainly," Watanuki agreed.

They all went out to the backyard. Watanuki went to the storeroom to get something, but Yuuko and Doumeki both stayed and watched as Fujin started to work her magic. She stood by the cherry tree with her hands slightly raised and after a few seconds, dark clouds started to appear in the sky.

Raiden joined her once the blue was covered in a thick blanket of gray, and then the thunder started rolling.

"Can I leave now?" Fujin asked.

"Sure," Raiden agreed, smiling at her apologetically. "Thank you."

Fujin grumbled a, "No problem," as she went back into the store, but didn't look happy about being called away from whatever she had been doing.

"Please forgive her behavior," Raiden said, and Yuuko and Doumeki both looked at her. "She's usually a very happy person."

That was certainly how Yuuko remembered her. "Was she doing something important?"

"Yes," Raiden murmured. "She's preparing for her husband's funeral."

Yuuko and Doumeki glanced at each other.

She could guess what Doumeki was thinking—it was probably something like, "Gods can die?" That wasn't the story here, though. "Fujin's" husband had been human, and very old indeed. The one time Yuuko had met him, he could barely walk up a flight of stairs on his own—it didn't surprise her that he had finally passed on, and that did explain "Fujin's" agitation.

"All ready?" Watanuki asked as he rejoined them.

Yuuko looked at what he was carrying—it was some kind of metal instrument. It was the general shape of a teardrop, but the pointed top end was very very long and sharp looking, like a needle.

"What's that?" Yuuko asked.

"It's kind of like a lightning rod," Watanuki answered, "but specifically attracts only creatures of lightning, not lightning itself."

"Where did you get it?" Yuuko probed.

"From me," Raiden said with a slight smile.

"Shall we?" Watanuki continued, and put the instrument where Fujin had been standing. He wasn't surprised that she was already gone.

Raiden continued to make the thunder roll around in the clouds until lightning started to shoot down. Watanuki started making the instrument work with the appropriate word spells, and Yuuko could see it beginning to glow and produce electricity of its own. After about sixty seconds, it worked.

There was a loud crack in the air and a strange creature appeared, sticking to the base of the instrument. It looked kind of like a mutated monkey to Yuuko.

"What the—" it started to say, but cut off when it noticed Raiden. "Finally—I've been trying to get back home for weeks!"

"I'm sorry, Raiju," Raiden said as she pulled him off the instrument, and hugged him close to her chest. "I wish you would just stay at home or with me—there's too much electricity in the air out here for you to move around freely."

"I can't stay cooped up all the time," Raiju argued, and then looked at Watanuki. "You again, huh? Is there really so much interference in the air that my mother had to call upon _you_ for help?"

"You're welcome," Watanuki grumbled.

"Be polite," Raiden chided.

Raiju looked at Doumeki for a moment, said nothing, and then looked at Yuuko—if he had a human face, she would have been able to tell that the look was speculative. "'Evening, ma'am," he said as the rain started to fall. "Would you like to see something interesting?"

"Like what?" Yuuko asked.

"Turn that thing off," Raiju ordered at Watanuki, indicating the instrument.

"It's already deactivated," Watanuki replied, his tone beyond annoyed.

"Good," Raiju said. He floated away from his "mother" and into the sky.

"Fireworks?" Watanuki said, and Yuuko could see the slight smile on his face. He stepped onto the deck next to her and Doumeki, and the air filled up with sparks.

Yuuko screamed joyfully—it was so pretty. Even Doumeki looked slightly awestruck.

She had seen this before, though—she didn't know when, but she was sure she had seen it.

It only lasted a few second. Any more than that, and the electrically charged raindrops would start to damage the plants. Raiju floated back down to Raiden's arms.

"Thank you for helping me get my child back," she said to Watanuki as she unclasped her necklace, and she handed it to him.

"Any time," Watanuki replied with a smile.

"You take care of that little lady," Raiju warned.

"Of course I will," Watanuki growled back.

"And thanks for today," Raiju added.

Watanuki waved slightly as a large bolt of lightning came down on them, and they were gone in the flash. There wasn't any damage to anything, even the grass.

"Hey, Watanuki," Yuuko said, excited, "I think I'll remember seeing this before when you grant my wish."

Watanuki looked down at her with a smile. "I'm sure you will."

* * *

><p>Author's Note:<p>

It's a short chapter this week-just one part. I am now going to spend the rest of the week reading for pleasure, which is something I haven't had time to do in a while.


	10. Chapter 5 P1

Five-Part One

Yuuko was looking around the storeroom. There were so many things in it—most of them gave off a good feeling, but some of them almost felt straight up evil.

"Yuuko?" Watanuki called.

She trotted out of the storeroom and back into the main shop and found Watanuki waiting for her in the entry way.

"Finally ready?" She asked.

"I don't want to hear that from you," Watanuki replied—Yuuko was the one who insisted on taking the time to twist her hair up with the cherry blossom hair pins that matched her kimono. If she hadn't, Watanuki wouldn't have bothered to go back to the kitchen and make some extra Inari sushi. "Maru, Moro," he called, and they came dancing around the dividing wall. "We should be back pretty late, so don't wait up for us."

"Okay," they agreed at the same time.

Yuuko watched them run off in the direction of their room, and she and Watanuki left.

They were on their way to Doumeki's temple—it was flower viewing season, and they were going to meet up with everyone there.

"So where are we going to look at flowers?" Yuuko asked.

"Wherever Kohane wants," Watanuki answered. "This is the first time I'll be able to see cherry blossoms with her in a while—she and that stupid husband of hers used to come to the shop and we would watch the cherry tree in the back bloom, but I'm sure it'll be more enjoyable with more trees."

Yuuko made a contemplative noise. "How come you dislike Grandpa Shizuka so much?"

"That's just how it's always been," Watanuki dismissed.

"It doesn't make sense," Yuuko insisted. "You like Doumeki, and he's just like Grandpa Shizuka."

Watanuki chose not to reply—the thought of telling her that it was hard to dislike someone you used to hold and feed through a bottle just made him feel awkward.

"Oh, I know," Yuuko continued, and Watanuki looked down at her. "Grandpa Shizuka must have stolen your girlfriend in high school!"

"He did not," Watanuki snapped, and Yuuko laughed.

"Let's see," she continued, "Grandma Kohane is about ten years younger than you and Grandpa Shizuka, so I doubt it was her…it must have been Grandma Himawari, then—she went to high school with you, too, right?"

"Neither of us ever dated Himawari," Watanuki growled, and then sighed. "After high school she moved up north and married a man she met in college."

"You didn't approve?" Yuuko guessed from his tone.

"It's not that," Watanuki disagreed. "I only met him a couple times. You've seen the bad luck that follows Himawari around, right? She brought him to the shop because that bad luck affects everyone around her—she wanted to get some charms that would keep that bad luck from affecting him, too."

"Did they work?" Yuuko asked.

"Enough that they could live a peaceful life together," Watanuki allowed. "He died a couple decades ago, though."

Yuuko tilted her head to the side as she examined the side of Watanuki's face that she could see. "You did love her, though, didn't you?"

"Yes, I was in love with her," Watanuki agreed. "That was a long time ago, though—she and I have both changed in more ways than her aging and me not."

"Watanuki," Yuuko said, "if I asked you why you chose to stop your time, would you tell me?"

Why had he chosen to be left behind by his friends as they grew and moved forward with the world? Why had he chosen to leave them behind and stay locked in a space that didn't truly exist in the world?

Watanuki looked at her. She was almost eye level with him in the sandals she was wearing, so she got a full view of the complicated mixture of emotions in his eyes. What showed most was the pain and loneliness. The look only lasted for a second before he faced forward again.

"You'll know someday," was all he eventually answered.

They were walking up the temple steps at that point. Yuuko tightened her grip on Watanuki's arm—the way he said that almost worried her. There was something kind of foreboding about him saying "You'll know someday," rather than, "I'll tell you someday."

"You made it."

Yuuko looked up to find Kohane waiting for them just beyond the gate.

"Good afternoon," Watanuki said. "I hope we're not too late."

"Not at all," Kohane assured him, and started leading them up to the main temple, though very slowly, and Watanuki had to help her up steps. "We just finished setting up."

"Do you guys do something special for flower viewing?" Yuuko asked.

"We weren't setting up for the flowers," Kohane corrected. "We were setting up for the celebration."

"Celebration?" Watanuki repeated. "What are you celebrating? I could have made something special."

Kohane laughed lightly. "I suppose it's not that surprising that you forgot."

"Forgot what?" Watanuki asked, eyebrow raised.

"Kimihiro, what day is it?" Kohane asked back.

"April first," Watanuki answered, and then his eyes widened slightly in realization.

"Yes," Kohane nodded. "It's your birthday."

Yuuko made an excited noise. "Birthday party!"

"He forgot, didn't he?"

It was Shizuka who asked. He was standing in a doorway leading out to the courtyard where there were a few cherry trees with at least half their blossoms in bloom. Doumeki, Sakura, Syaoran and Himawari were all sitting on a large blanket under the trees, drinking tea and _sake_. There were already some snacks there, but left plenty of room for the food Watanuki had made.

"Did you seriously forget about your own birthday?" Yuuko asked.

"I guess I've just had a lot on my mind," Watanuki said unevenly—worst on the spot cover up ever.

"Come on, get over here," Syaoran said.

Watanuki smiled, and they joined the others. "It's Sakura's birthday, too, though," he pointed out, looking at her as he spoke.

"It's better to celebrate together, isn't it?" Sakura replied, and ran her hand over Watanuki's head the same way a mother would to her child.

Watanuki leaned his head into her hand. "Yeah," he agreed.


	11. Chapter 5 P2

Five-Part Two

It was passed midnight by the time Watanuki noticed how late it was. In the end, Kohane convinced him to just spend the night—Maru and Moro would be alright by themselves for one night.

It wasn't like they had never been alone at the shop, Watanuki could remember more than one occasion when they had been by themselves for days when Yuuko was still in charge, but they hadn't been alone for more than a century. It worried him.

"He's such a busy body," Yuuko muttered as he went off to use the phone—he insisted on calling them at the very least.

"He just worries a lot," Kohane amended, and she started leading Yuuko the room she would be sleeping in. "He's always been like that."

"Really?" Yuuko laughed lightly. "I'm surprised his hair hasn't turned white yet."

"Shizuka said something similar once," Kohane commented.

"Those two are really close, huh?" Yuuko mumbled. "Watanuki says he doesn't like Grandpa Shizuka, but I get the feeling that's not true."

"They've always had a difficult relationship," Kohane allowed. "Watanuki changed a lot between when I first met him and when…well, when he stopped his time. He and Shizuka share a special bond that neither of them could break even if they wanted to."

"You mean their eyes?" Yuuko asked, and Kohane looked at her.

"Watanuki told you about that?"

"No," Yuuko shook her head. "Watanuki's right eye is the same color as Grandpa Shizuka's eyes, and I can see the energy connection between them—that's half of Grandpa Shizuka's eye, right? Plus there's a stronger connection…almost like they're brothers or something."

Kohane looked forward again—she shouldn't have been surprised that this girl could tell. Maybe she really was the real Yuuko.

"What you're sensing is probably Shizuka's blood in Kimihiro," she said. "A long time ago Kimihiro got hurt—badly. If Shizuka hadn't given Kimihiro blood, he would have died."

"What happened?" Yuuko asked, and her eyebrows pulled together.

"I happened."

It was Himawari—she was a few feet away at the end of the hall, coming out of the room she was staying in, and smiling at Yuuko like she usually did.

"What do you mean?" Yuuko questioned.

"It was my bad luck," Himawari told her. "You can see it hanging around me, right? We were at school, and I had touched Watanuki's shoulder. He bumped up against a window on the second floor and fell to the ground."

Yuuko tilted her head to the side. "Did you not know about the thing that's following you?"

"I knew," Himawari said. "I was careless—Watanuki finally noticed it then, too, but he still wanted to be my friend."

"That doesn't surprise me," Yuuko replied lightly. "I could tell the moment I met him that he was one of those kind fools." She looked at the bird that was still on Himawari's shoulder. "He made that, right?"

"His name is Tanpopo," Himawari murmured, and ran her finger over its head. "Watanuki gave him to me so that I would never be alone…that was before he was the shopkeeper, though. I've still never given him anything in return."

"Isn't it okay to just give gifts to people every now and then?" Yuuko pointed out, and Kohane and Himawari both looked at her as if she had said something shocking and strange. "My teachers told me once that the happiness of the people you care about is the best return gift they can give you."

Kohane and Himawari glanced at each other, and then Kohane asked, "Who are these teachers of yours?"

Yuuko thought for a moment about the best way to answer them. "I guess they're the people who used to take care of me."

"Where are they now?" Himawari probed.

"I don't know," Yuuko shrugged—she was telling the truth. She didn't know if they were still in Ikebukuro or in Kyoto or if they were looking for her or if they were still in Japan at all.

She doubted they were looking for her. If they were, surely they would have found her by now—she couldn't hide herself that well—but by that same token, she really couldn't imagine her teachers _not_ looking for her. Even if they weren't worried, they were all control freaks—they wouldn't just let her escape, leaving without a word or any warning.

"Well, we should all be getting to sleep," Kohane eventually said. "There's already a futon ready for you here," she indicated the room she and Yuuko were standing next to, "and Kimihiro's room is right here," she indicated the next door down the hall and across from Himawari's.

"Okay," Yuuko smiled. "Good night."

"Good night," Kohane and Himawari replied in unison.

They watched Yuuko walk into the room and close the door behind herself, and then looked at each other. They didn't need to speak to communicate—it was plain in their eyes: there was still doubt that this really was Yuuko.

The Yuuko they had known wouldn't have said that—she believed in absolute balance. Emotion was the only thing that could be given without anything in return—it wasn't something that could be paid in return for things.

What this Yuuko had said was something any normal person would say, but Yuuko wasn't normal.

So what did this mean? Was it just because she had no memories of her past life? Was balance something she had been taught? Or was it a necessity of running the shop? Himawari couldn't come to the store often enough to have seen it, but Kohane had witnessed what it did to the owner when he didn't take a balanced price for the wishes he granted. Maybe the need for equal exchange was something Yuuko had learned just as hard when she first opened the shop however many years before Watanuki had arrived at it.

But was if this really wasn't that Yuuko? What would that do to Watanuki?

Kohane and Himawari broke eye contact at the same time with the silent agreement that they could only watch for now. Himawari went back into her room, and Kohane went in the direction of hers and Shizuka's.

…

Yuuko had been dreaming of snow, before she opened her eyes. It was still dark out—she couldn't have been asleep more than a couple hours…then she realized the room she was opening her eyes to wasn't the one she had fallen asleep in. It was her room back at the shop.

She heard something musical—someone was playing some kind of string instrument.

She got up and went around to the back porch, and there she found Watanuki playing a _shamisen_. The red and gold _kiseru_ pipe from his room was resting on a tobacco tray, lit and with smoke wafting from the bowl. The cherry tree was in full bloom, and its white petals were falling like the snow Yuuko had just been dreaming about. There was a bottle of _sake_ and two cups on the other side of the tobacco tray.

"Where did you learn to play that?" Yuuko asked.

Watanuki looked up at her, rhythm unbroken. "A customer taught me how to play as part of her price for a wish."

"What was her wish?" Yuuko probed as she sat down next to him.

"This _shamisen_ wouldn't make any sound," Watanuki told her, "so she brought it to me."

"Why wouldn't it make sound?"

"Because it was sad, I suppose," Watanuki murmured. "It knew the time of the one it loved was coming to an end." Yuuko looked at him questioningly. "A plectrum—one that was at the store."

"What happened?" Yuuko asked.

"The woman who brought this into the store played it with the plectrum," Watanuki answered, "and the plectrum broke at the end of the song."

"Her lover died," Yuuko said quietly.

"Yes," Watanuki agreed, and finished the song he was playing. He picked up the pipe and inhaled. "Would you pour that _sake_?"

Yuuko did as he asked—she filled both cups and handed one to him.

"If it didn't want to be played without that plectrum, why is it playing now?" She wondered.

"Who knows," Watanuki laughed quietly. He drank the _sake_ and started playing another song.

Yuuko drank her cup as well, and refilled it several times without realizing it. Dream or not, that was the first time she had had _sake_, or alcohol of any kind. She picked up the pipe and inhaled that, too—she had seen one of her teachers smoke one just like it on occasion. It tasted almost exactly like she thought it would.

"Nostalgic," she murmured.

"Hmm?"

"This feels nostalgic," Yuuko elaborated. "This pipe, the _sake_…" She laughed quietly. "You're really good at that, you know," she added when the song ended again, looking at the _shamisen_ as she spoke.

"Thank you," Watanuki said. He placed his hand over hers and brought the pipe to his lips so he could inhale again.

Yuuko giggled. Watanuki's face was close enough that Yuuko had to lean in just a little bit, and her lips were against his. He didn't move—maybe he was just too surprised to. Yuuko didn't wait for him to catch up to what was going on. She opened her mouth slightly, and his lips moved with hers. It wasn't until Watanuki could actually taste her that it had all clicked in his head what was happening…and he still didn't move.

Then they both opened their eyes to their individual rooms in Doumeki's temple, and both were trying to write off what had just happened as nothing more than the kind of dream a normal person would have.

* * *

><p>Author's Note:<p>

Sorry it's taken me so long to upload part two-I haven't been able to get on my computer at all for the last few days. A rather annoying strand of strep throat has been going around where I live. Thank you for your patience.


	12. Chapter 6 P1

Six-Part One

Watanuki was moving almost robotically—he had been for the last week, ever since the kiss in the dream he and Yuuko had shared.

He just didn't know what to do, or how to think of it. Yuuko had always been a flirtatious woman, but she had never gone _that_ far. What had possessed her to kiss him? Was it the alcohol? Watanuki knew it was entirely impossible to be affected by such things in that kind of dream—one where it was almost indistinguishable from reality.

That didn't help him with figuring out what to do, though.

Yuuko was acting perfectly natural, as if it hadn't happened—this almost made Watanuki wonder if perhaps the Yuuko he had met was one his mind had come up with.

Convincing himself of that would take a great deal of time and effort—what did he do until then?

"Watanuki!" Came Yuuko's cheerful voice, and he jumped.

He was in his room, and had just started taking off his day clothes to change into his night clothes, but he hastily pulled the tie back around his kimono as she entered.

"There's a woman standing outside the gate," Yuuko said, and Watanuki looked at her questioningly. "She can see me, Maru and Moro, but I don't think she can get in."

"Really?" Watanuki murmured, the concern evident on his face.

Yuuko followed him back through the house and out to the front porch. She hadn't expected him to stop so suddenly, so she bumped into him when he did, and then looked up at his face with her eyebrow raised. He almost looked worried—maybe a bit fearful. The woman smiled at him playfully and waved.

He grabbed Yuuko's hand and pulled her behind himself so she would be out of the woman's line of sight, though this seemed unnecessary considering the woman had already seen her.

"You may enter," Watanuki said quietly.

Yuuko felt the words vibrate in the air—that was a word spell.

The woman walked in, flicking her long blond hair over her shoulder as she went.

"Joro-Gumo," Watanuki murmured with a polite but cautious smile, "it's been a while. Please come in."

…

Yuuko sat, looking unblinkingly at the Joro-Gumo, and the Joro-Gumo was, in turn, looking just as intently at Yuuko.

Her energy was just unpleasant—that was all Yuuko could think. Her aura was almost poisoning the air around her.

Watanuki came into the room, then, with Mugetsu twisted around his neck and carrying a tray with _sake_ and cups—only two, though. Yuuko wasn't going to be included. After what happened last time she had come in contact with the stuff, she couldn't really blame Watanuki—she was still kind of surprised at herself, though didn't regret the action in the slightest. Watanuki had been so amusing all week.

"I'd heard that you had a little witch now," Joro-Gumo said as Watanuki handed her one of the cups. "There hasn't been one born here in quite some time—there have been several of us clamoring for a chance at her."

The look in Watanuki's eyes almost became cold. "If Yuuko is what you're here for—"

The Joro-Gumo cut him off with a laugh. "Only a senseless monster would be so foolish," she said. "I'm here for another reason."

"And what would that be?"

"Do you remember what I came here for the last time?" Joro-Gumo asked.

"That red pearl around your neck," Watanuki answered.

"Indeed," Joro-Gumo nodded, and rolled it around her fingers. "I went to go see that yaobikuni you got it from, after I left that night."

"I see," Watanuki said, and it took all his self-control to not smile approvingly. "And?"

"I killed her."

There was complete silence for a couple seconds, and then Watanuki's eyes really did go cold. "What?"

"I killed her," Joro-Gumo repeated, still with that playful smile on her face.

"Why?" Watanuki demanded.

"So that she wouldn't be lonely anymore," Joro-Gumo replied calmly. "You said yourself that she was still looking for someone to live with…so I killed her. I thought that it would be best if she could live with other mermaids."

"Oh, I've heard that story," Yuuko said, and Watanuki and the Joro-Gumo both looked at her. "A fisherman got a strange, human looking fish from the ocean, and gave its meat to his sick daughter. She got better, but stopped aging. Eventually the other villagers got so scared of her that they killed her, and then her soul manifested into a mermaid."

"That's one version," Joro-Gumo allowed, "but not what happened in this girl's case. How she became a yaobikuni isn't important—what matters is that she's gone."

"What do you mean?" Watanuki asked.

"I took her to the sea to kill her," Joro-Gumo explained, "and when I did I put her body into the water. You can't kill a yaobikuni easily, so while she was dying in the water, she turned into a mermaid, like I thought she would. There were already other merpeople coming to welcome her, so I figured she would be alright. We used to meet in the place I killed her every black moon, but she hasn't come the last few times—I'm worried."

"Really?"

It was Yuuko who questioned this, and Watanuki and the Joro-Gumo both looked at her again.

"Yuuko, would you go help Maru and Moro with the laundry?" Watanuki said almost in monotone.

Yuuko looked at him almost sulkily, but got up and left.

"She's rather impolite this time around, isn't she?" Joro-Gumo murmured, and took a sip of her _sake_. "Well, I suppose anyone would question that of a Joro-Gumo."

"I admit I'm also curious about why you're so attached to this girl," Watanuki said.

The Joro-Gumo laughed lightly. "I suppose because our pasts are similar," she told him, and looked at the reflection of the foxfire dancing in her _sake_ cup. "A human woman turns into a Joro-Gumo through a grudge—we're used and beaten by men until eventually we die, and then we turn into something else. That girl isn't much different. She might have turned into a joro-gumo herself, if she hadn't run away from her abusers and eaten the dead mermaid she found washed ashore."

"She still sought to be with people, even after being treated like that?" Watanuki questioned, though it wasn't hard to believe given what he had seen when he met her.

"I've never understood either," Joro-Gumo said. "Maybe that's why I was so interested in her when I first met her." She took another sip of sake. "But like I said before, neither her past nor mine matter. What matters is that she's missing."

"And you want me to find her?" Watanuki surmised.

"If you would be so kind." Joro-Gumo's playful smile was back on her face. "And what would the payment be?"

Watanuki thought about it for a moment. "I'll need that pearl."


	13. Chapter 6 P2

Six-Part Two

Watanuki looked at the pearl he was holding between his thumb and pointer finer. If he held it up to his eye at the right angle, it actually did look like a red moon.

The phone rang.

It was well past midnight, and Yuuko, Maru and Moro had already gone to bed. Watanuki had been drinking _sake_, looking up at the moonless sky, but he got up with a sigh to get the phone.

"Hello?"

"Good evening," came Jesse's voice from the other end.

"Evening?" Watanuki repeated. "It's the middle of the night."

"Not where I am," Jesse dismissed. "So how are things going?"

"Mmm," Watanuki hesitated, considering what to tell her. Then again, Jesse probably had more experience in any and every aspect of life than anyone else he knew. He told her what had happened on his birthday.

"She kissed you?" Jesse repeated.

"I may have kissed her back before it was over," Watanuki admitted.

Jesse was silent for a moment. "So what are you going to do?"

"I have no idea," Watanuki sighed, aggravated. "I may be more than a hundred and thirty years old, but I don't exactly have a lot of experience in this area of life."

"Was that the first time a girl ever kissed you?" Jesse asked, though her tone wasn't mocking in the slightest.

"Well, a joro-gumo kissed me once…sort of," Watanuki answered. It hadn't really been a kiss, she had fed wine into Watanuki's mouth when she had asked him to find the pearl he was now holding, but either way, whether Watanuki wanted to acknowledge it or not, he did prefer Yuuko's version.

"That doesn't count," Jesse dismissed, "and that's not what I meant by 'what are you going to do.'"

"Then what did you mean?" Watanuki raised his eyebrow.

"I was talking about her memories," Jesse said, and her voice was almost impatient. "Are you still planning to restore them?"

"Of course," Watanuki almost raised his voice. "That's what everything I've been doing has been for."

"So you have no intention of ever kissing Yuuko again?" Jesse questioned. "Or anything beyond it?"

Watanuki didn't answer, but his silence seemed to tell Jesse plenty.

"Would you ever have done that with Yuuko in the past?"

"No," Watanuki half snapped.

"Mhmm," Jesse agreed, "because despite Yuuko's flirtatious personality, the two of you never had that kind of relationship—I dare say it was more akin to that of a parent and child than anything. The last time she and I spoke before her death, she told me that the precious child she had been waiting for had finally come to her. You loved her, Watanuki, but never romantically, am I right?"

Watanuki hesitated. "You are."

"And what about now?"

Once again, Watanuki didn't answer, and once again, his silence said plenty.

"Watanuki," Jesse murmured, "if you restore Yuuko's memories, this new kind of relationship will more or less disappear."

"It was what she wished for," Watanuki said.

Jesse breathed out slowly, as if to calm her annoyance. "I swear, you and Yuuko are exactly the same."

"How so?" Watanuki asked.

"You're self-sacrificing martyrs," Jesse snapped, "in all the wrong ways. Honestly, this borders on sheer emotional masochism."

"I don't want to hear that from _you_," Watanuki grumbled. "I've seen your scars."

"Irrelevant," Jesse dismissed, still snappish. "Physical pain is nothing like emotional pain. Look Watanuki, you aren't going to be able to go back to looking at Yuuko like you used to—it's just a condition of your personality. It would be better for both of you if you stopped living in the past and tried walking into the future."

Watanuki knew he couldn't dispute this, so he chose to ignore it. "She already made the wish, and I already accepted it."

"Uhuh," Jesse muttered skeptically, "and tell me again, oh wise shopkeeper, what was her price for this wish?"

"The same as she asked of me," Watanuki replied slowly—he could sense a trick question in there somewhere.

"You used to clean and cook and do whatever miscellaneous thing for Yuuko, right?" Jesse confirmed.

"Yes."

"And how has that worked out so far the other way around?" Jesse questioned. "That girl couldn't efficiently clean or cook to save her life, and she's too much of a princess to do anything even close to heavy lifting or delivering whatever."

"She…" Watanuki started, but took a second to come up with anything. "She waters the garden for me, and helps Maru and Moro with laundry."

"Really?" Jesse said, and Watanuki knew it wasn't in surprise that Yuuko actually did these things, but to express how utterly unimpressed she was by his pathetic defense. "Watanuki, I know you take care of her—you _need_ to take care of her, because she certainly doesn't know how to do it herself." Watanuki was about to argue—not that he could—but she talked over him. "My point is that there has been no kind of payment made to you—if anything, she owes you."

Watanuki gritted his teeth. "I'm not going to change my mind."

"Don't be stubborn," Jesse advised, but then she sighed. "Have you thought any more about the offer I made?"

"I have," Watanuki admitted begrudgingly. "I'm really not sure it would work."

"It would," Jesse insisted. "Just keep thinking about it."

"Yeah, I will," Watanuki agreed.

"I'll call again soon," Jesse added, "and I'll be arranging a trip back to Japan sometime in the following months."

"I'll keep that in mind," Watanuki said.

"Good night," Jesse murmured.

"Good night."

Watanuki put the phone down and just stood there for a while, thinking.

Jesse was right—even if he did restore Yuuko's memories of him, he wouldn't be able to go back. He wouldn't be able to look at her the same.

Maybe he really didn't want to deep down.

He wasn't exactly adverse to his current life with the current Yuuko. Even if she didn't remember him, she was still quite blatantly Yuuko…only younger and smaller…closer to equal ground…

But she herself wanted her memories back. Who was Watanuki to deny her them? And he had already promised her he would get them back for her—Watanuki did not go back on his promises.

So he would have to take Jesse up on her offer—the sooner he did, the better.

Maybe what was done couldn't be undone, but just because she got her memories from her previous life back, it didn't mean the current, young Yuuko would disappear. Like Jesse had said, walk into the future—that had always been Yuuko's way of thinking.

Though once again, Yuuko now wasn't much different from Yuuko then. That kiss might not have meant much to her. Watanuki could see Yuuko doing that to tease a guy she thought of as an equal.


	14. Chapter 7

Seven

"Hey, Watanuki?" Yuuko said, and he looked up at her from where he was kneeling in the storeroom, getting ready to lift a basin not unlike the one he had put that wooden crow in. "What's that for?"

"Do you remember the joro-gumo who came to the shop a couple weeks ago?" Watanuki asked. "I can finally start doing what she asked."

"Because tonight is a full moon?" Yuuko questioned.

Watanuki nodded as he picked the basin up, and he started carrying it out to the backyard. "The full moon is the hardest time for a joro-gumo to be out, but it's the best time to try to look for anything that lives in water."

"Why?"

"Because the moon god and the water god have a special relationship," Watanuki told her. "It's rumored that they conceived a child together, and that child became a powerful commander of demons in the mortal world."

Yuuko hesitated. "I've been told that the gods of the moon and water are both female."

"That doesn't mean they couldn't conceive a child," Watanuki replied, "just that it wasn't conceived the way we conceive children. You remember Raiden and Raiju? They're mother and child, but to my understanding, Raiden conceived him all on her own."

"Gods are strange," Yuuko agreed.

"And not to be messed with," Watanuki added, and his voice took on a more serious tone. "It's said that merpeople are also the children of the moon and the water. Gods don't like it when their children are threatened."

"Does anyone?" Yuuko pointed out.

"True," Watanuki agreed with a light chuckle.

Yuuko watched Watanuki place the basin on the grass and away from the cherry tree, the petals of which were beginning to fall away. The moon was reflected in it dead center when he filled it with the well water. Watanuki dropped the red pearl into it.

"What's that going to do?" Yuuko asked.

"Joro-Gumo asked me to find her friend," Watanuki reminded her. "The pearl was made by the yaobikuni we were discussing that night. I can use it to trace her."

"Why is a joro-gumo worried about a mermaid?" Yuuko questioned. "It's so…uncharacteristic of her kind."

"Even a joro-gumo was once a human," Watanuki replied.

He pulled what looked like a long string of thread from his sleeve.

"Is that hair?" Yuuko questioned.

"The hair of the mermaid in question," Watanuki nodded. "It was something else Joro-Gumo gave me so that I can find her friend. Come here."

Yuuko hopped off the edge of the deck and joined Watanuki. He put his arm around her shoulder and held her tightly against his side before lowering the end of the hair into the basin, but instead of floating around the top, it sank in around the pearl. Yuuko watched Watanuki feed his energy into the water through the hair, and it started to wriggle and knot itself around the pearl. After a couple seconds, the pearl, hair still attached, started to rise out of the basin and proceeded to float away.

Yuuko half expected the hair to snap, but it didn't. She clamped her arms around Watanuki tightly when she realized they were going with it.

The sight of Tokyo from above really was something else. All the bright lights flashing and moving around, all the noise and bustling—it made it seem like they were above a river of lights and sounds.

"How far is it going to go?" Yuuko asked.

"It's going to wherever the mermaid is," Watanuki answered.

Yuuko was starting to get a bad feeling about this. Maybe it was just because it was a joro-gumo that had made the request, but she felt that wherever they were going, it wasn't going to be good. Something bad was going to happen, or something bad was going to be there. Mixing with demons never had a happy ending.

The pearl dragged them on for a while.

Yuuko wasn't surprised when she noticed they were flying over the ocean—where else would a mermaid be? But she was surprised when they started going down. At first she was afraid they were going to dive straight into the violent looking water, but then she noticed the small island—or very large rock—they were headed for.

They touched down in front of the mouth of a cave. There was no vegetation of any kind on the rock, not even seaweed or algae.

"How deep do you think it goes?" Watanuki asked.

"Maybe if we throw something in, we can find out," Yuuko suggested.

Neither of them could see the end—or rather, see the bottom. The cave obviously extended quite steeply and quite deeply underneath the water's surface.

"Hmm…" Watanuki breathed absently. "Yuuko, I'm going to go in—you stay here."

"What?" Yuuko demanded. "No."

"This cave might collapse," Watanuki pointed out, "and we could get crushed to death. It could also fill up with water and we could drown. I don't want to put you in that kind of danger."

"Then why did you bring me?" Yuuko raised her eyebrow.

"I didn't really think about it," Watanuki admitted.

"Well, you already brought me," Yuuko pointed out, "so we're going in together."

"I don't want you to get hurt," Watanuki said firmly.

"I don't want you to get hurt either," Yuuko replied. "I'll be fine—I can take care of myself, and I'm not going to stay up here alone."

And with that, Yuuko started to walk into the cave. Watanuki made an annoyed noise and followed her.

Yuuko made sure to grab Watanuki's hand before they were entirely engulfed in darkness, of course. It wouldn't do well for them to get separated in case the cave forked off at some point, and neither of them knew what they were going to find.

"Don't you have something to make light with?" Yuuko asked.

"No," Watanuki answered, but then recanted, "well, actually…" He searched around his pockets for a moment, thinking that he might have some spares, and to his delight, he found he did. "Fire," he said, and just like that, the paper spell in his hand ignited by itself.

They walked along. The cave descended into the sea in a large spiral, and was eerily dry and noiseless. Yuuko could feel something ominous the further they went, and after a minute she could smell the stench of rotting flesh, but she didn't say anything. She didn't doubt that Watanuki could also feel whatever was ahead and smell whatever corpse was festering.

"Are you scared?" Watanuki asked quietly.

Yuuko looked up at him.

"Your hand is shaking."

Yuuko looked down at her hand, which was clamped tight around Watanuki's and quivering without her notice.

She breathed out slowly, and twitched her other hand as if to direct her energy. Watanuki could see that almost red energy surround the area immediately around them. Yuuko didn't need word spells to use magic. The look on her face was the one she always had when she was serious about something unpleasant.

"What did you do?" Watanuki asked.

"I may be young and beautiful," Yuuko said in her falsely lighthearted way, "but I _am_ a very powerful witch, you know. Shrouding us in an illusion so that nothing can detect us is easy."

Watanuki chuckled lightly, but he really wasn't in a humorous mood. Something big and something bad was just below them—the question was, how big and how bad?

"And Watanuki," Yuuko murmured in a serious, quiet voice, "I _am_ scared."

"I won't let anything hurt you," Watanuki promised, and squeezed her hand back.

Yuuko laughed shortly and humorlessly. "I'm not scared for myself, stupid—I'm afraid of you getting hurt." She leaned her head against his shoulder for a moment. "I just get the feeling that if something happens, you'll disappear."

"I won't," Watanuki almost whispered—there was a light up ahead.

"Watanuki," Yuuko said, a little more urgently because she sensed that he would need to know this. "Watanuki, if I do get hurt, there are people who will know—they'll come here and find me, and they might hurt you if you get in their way. If that happens, don't interfere, okay?"

Watanuki stopped walking at that and looked at the girl who was clutching his arm against her body now. "Yuuko…are you hiding from someone?"

Yuuko was saved from answering by a loud crashing noise coming from the direction of the light, like a large metal bowl hitting rock. An annoyed hiss followed.

"Stay behind me," Watanuki instructed.

Just a little more around the curve and Watanuki and Yuuko were standing in the mouth of a large cavern. The air was rancid—it was worse than the smell of the girl stuck under the hydrangeas. Yuuko was finding it difficult to fight off the waves of nausea.

There were torches lining the wall of the cavern, and the ground was covered in blood that ranged from weeks old to fresh. It was the same with what was left of the corpses in the corner—weeks old to almost looked still alive. They were all merpeople, and most of them were still whole—other than how decayed their flesh was—but there were severed arms and ends of tails and random organs scattered around the pile.

Watanuki recognized the long, blond hair swirling out from the bottom of the pile with horror.

He was too late, then. It had been too late for at least three months.

Yuuko was visibly shaking now, and her hand was pressed against her mouth to keep herself from screaming. Not in all her young life had she seen anything so terrible and disgusting and putrid and hopeless.

Watanuki moved in front of her, and her view was blocked by his shoulder. She leaned her head against it again, and felt a tear trail down her cheek.

Who could do this?

The crashing sound came again. Watanuki and Yuuko both looked at the other side of the cavern, and there was a man there. Yuuko's illusion was obviously working because he hadn't noticed them at all, even thought he was facing their direction and they were in plain view. He didn't even look up at Yuuko's gasp of surprise.

"Do you know him?" Watanuki asked in a flat voice.

Yuuko shook his head. "He's a necromancer."

"Necromancer?" Watanuki repeated, and looked down at her wearily. "I thought necromancy died out decades ago—the druids eliminated it from their practices."

"That's not a druid," Yuuko said, "that's a witch."

Watanuki twitched. "Witches can practice necromancy?"

"Not successfully," Yuuko hedged. "I know there's this one witch in America—people say she's so adept at healing that she can bring the dead back to life, but I'm pretty sure those are just rumors."

"You don't recognize him?" Watanuki inclined his head toward the necromancer.

Yuuko shook her head.

They both looked at the man again—tall, thin, tan skin, dark hair, dark eyes, long nose. He was leaning over another corpse—a mermaid that looked barely old enough to reproduce. Her large eyes were open and cloudy, and there was some kind of yellowish pus oozing from the gills on her neck. Her abdomen was entirely slashed open, her organs and intestines were strewn out around her, draping over the table she was laid out on, and the necromancer was digging around inside her, as if he was looking for something. He knocked another bowl over with his elbow, and hissed in annoyance again.

After a second, he stopped, stuffed the mermaids organs back inside her body—Yuuko couldn't help but notice that his hands were bare, and she felt another wave of nausea—and sealed her abdomen closed with a concentration of energy in his fingers.

He held still for an entire minute, just looking at the corpse as if it was supposed to spring to life, and at the end of that minute it jerked and started to convulse wildly. The necromancer held the mermaid down against the table until she stopped flailing.

Once she was still, he took his blood stained hands away from her and just looked at her again. She was staring wide eyed at the rock ceiling, not blinking and not breathing.

He spoke, then, in a low voice that was almost a growl.

"Sobek."

The corpse didn't move.

The necromancer let out a furious roar and plunged his hand back into the mermaid's stomach. When he pulled it back out, he was clutching what looked like a blood covered rock, and the corpse entirely relaxed—it's short, false life was gone. The necromancer grabbed her by her dark hair and tossed her over to the other corpses.

When he banged the rock down on the table, freeing both his hands to grab a wooden chair and break it against the rock wall in frustration, Yuuko and Watanuki were able to see that what the necromancer had pulled out of his victim was actually a crystal. The kind used to store energy.

In this case, it was the energy of a zashiki-warashi.

Not just the zashiki-warashi's energy, but someone else's as well—Yuuko didn't know who it belonged to, but it wasn't a human, demon, or spirit of any kind. Watanuki was just as lost on its origin.

"Come on," Watanuki said, and started pulling Yuuko back the way they had come.

He had been too shocked by the scene before him to remember that he was there to find one particular mermaid…and that was all. The joro-gumo had paid him to find the yaobikuni she had turned into a mermaid, not retrieve her—not to carry her corpse back with him or to interfere with the one who had killed her. Watanuki pressed a _shikigami_ against the rock wall—one that would blend into the stone and remain unnoticed by whoever passed by it—and that was all he could do. He could only lead the joro-gumo to the necromancers cave.

"Watanuki!" Yuuko protested. "That necromancer is murdering merpeople!"

"Joro-Gumo asked me to find her friend," Watanuki replied in monotone, "and that's all I can do. I can't exceed the limitations of the contract."

Yuuko pulled her arm away from Watanuki. He turned, surprised at her sharp, almost petulant motion, and looked at her with something akin to surprise.

"I don't know what you are, Watanuki," Yuuko said quietly, "but I do know that you have a great deal of power inside you. What good is it if you can't use it when you need it?" She made an annoyed noise. "You may have 'limitations,' but I don't."

For a second, Watanuki watched Yuuko run back toward the light.

Yuuko had never done that before—never done something without being asked by a customer. Her actions now were shocking to Watanuki.

And then it really hit him—this was not the Yuuko he had met in that shop.

This may have been her reincarnation—it may have been Yuuko's soul—but she really had no memories of her passed life. She wasn't restricted by the need for balance. She wasn't bound by the store's rules. She was just Yuuko at her basic core—a kind woman who cared for others. Now she was free to care as much as she wanted without having to ask for or expect anything in return.

This Yuuko was free.

But she was also reckless.

This Yuuko was fifteen years old, did not know how to fight, and her cache of tricks was almost entirely empty. She didn't have the knowledge she had accumulated in her long, frozen, previous life.

And now she was about to charge right into the nest of a necromancer.

Watanuki ran after her. He managed to grab her hand just before she walked through the mouth of the cavern and pulled her back.

"Don't—" Yuuko started to protest, but she couldn't continue.

It took a moment for her to realize that Watanuki was kissing her. His arms were clamped around her so that she couldn't struggle.

Watanuki hadn't actually meant to do this—and he was horrified with himself afterward—but he went with it. When he pulled his face away from Yuuko's, he looked into her shocked eyes, breathing heavily from his panic. He shifted his arms so that he was hugging her more naturally.

"Don't be reckless," he said through clenched teeth. "I can't lose you again."

_Again_? Yuuko thought. She remembered the last time he had hugged her like this, back in her dream—she had thought he looked like a boy who had been separated from his mother and just found her again.

"I have friends who can handle this," Watanuki continued. "We're not equipped to deal with…"

But Watanuki didn't finish his sentence. Yuuko's eyes widened again, this time in realization—her illusion had slipped away in her shock. She sensed the necromancer was right behind her. Watanuki was staring up at him—right into his cold, black eyes.

The necromancer didn't question their presence. He assessed that they were not friendly to his work, and that was that. He held a large, curved dagger up above his head and swung it down.

Watanuki's reflexes kicked in in time for him to jump backward—the dagger missed both him and Yuuko, but just barely, and now they were on the ground and cornered. Watanuki started murmuring the word spells to teleport himself and Yuuko back to the shop. The necromancer raised the dagger again, ready for a second attack, be he was pushed back by Watanuki's energy.

For a second, Yuuko and Watanuki passed through nothingness, but then they were lying on the grass in the backyard, right next to the basin. The sun was peeking over the horizon.

Yuuko was on top of Watanuki. Her arms were wrapped tightly around his ribcage, and her head was pressed against his chest so hard it was moving up and down in correlation with his rapid heartbeat.

Watanuki placed his arms around her, and she loosened her grip, but they stayed like that until after the sun had completely risen.

Yuuko eventually realized Watanuki had fallen asleep—or maybe passed out would have been a better word. She propped herself up, and his arms fell limply to his sides.

He must have been exhausted from not only traveling all the way to that necromancer's lair, but also from that quickie teleportation. That was the kind of thing you usually had to prepare yourself for ahead of time, physically, mentally and spiritually.

Telekinesis wasn't Yuuko's strong point, but she was able to use it well enough to lift Watanuki and float him into the shop and into his bedroom. She changed him into his pajamas and left him in his bed.

Yuuko heard Maru's and Moro's giggling before they came running through the hall.

"Mistress, Mistress!" They said excitedly.

"Good morning," Yuuko greeted, and kissed their foreheads. "Did you two sleep well?"

"Yes!" They replied together.

"That's good," Yuuko smiled. "Watanuki's tired, though—he needs to rest, so let's be quiet."

"Quiet!" They repeated in an excited whisper, and pressed their fingers over each other's lips.

Yuuko left them to play and went to the phone.

The recipient picked up after one ring.

"Yes?"

"Good morning," Yuuko murmured.

"Well, if it isn't my errant student," the woman on the other end said humorously. "How nice of you to call almost two months after running away from home."

"I don't need your permission to have friends or to go hang out with them," Yuuko replied.

The woman giggled as if Yuuko was acting like an amusing, stubborn child. "Then why are you calling?"

"A necromancer is murdering merpeople," Yuuko said.

The woman audibly choked on whatever she was drinking, and it took a minute for her to be able to respond.

"Where did you come into contact with a necromancer?" She tried to demand, but her voice was too raspy to sound authoritative.

"Um…" Yuuko hesitated.

"Where's Watanuki?" She asked.

Yuuko was silent for a moment. "You know Watanuki?"

"Obviously."

"And you know where I am?"

"Of course."

"How long have you known?"

"Since they day you left," the woman replied and snorted humorously. "Honestly, why do you think no one has come to collect you?"

Yuuko made an annoyed noise. "Necromancer—somewhere in the Pacific Ocean. Come over here so you can get details from Watanuki."

"Where is he?" Her teacher asked again.

"Sleeping," Yuuko answered. "He used up a lot of energy last night."

Her teacher huffed, amused. "I'll be there before sunset."


	15. Chapter 8 P1

Eight-Part One

For the first time in a long time, Watanuki didn't dream. At some point he just became aware of the darkness and that he was lying down and was very comfortable. He was in his bed.

He opened his eye, and his vision was blurred—how had he gotten here?

"Are you awake?"

Watanuki looked to his left, where Yuuko was sitting in a chair and looking at him with her playful smile.

Watanuki propped himself up on one elbow and ran his hand through his hair. "How long have I been sleeping?"

"Almost two whole days."

"Wow, really?" Watanuki questioned. "I'm sorry—it must have been difficult for you to take care of me. Are Maru and Moro awake? Has Doumeki or anyone…"

Watanuki trailed off as Yuuko stood and sat on his bed. She leaned backward so her back was arched over his legs, and she propped herself on her elbows as well with her fingers interlocked over her stomach. Watanuki might not have blushed with just that, but her dress was very short and very low cut and it didn't look like she cared whether or not it continued to cover her properly.

"Everything's fine," Yuuko told him. "Maru and Moro are sleeping, Doumeki hasn't left since he found out you were unconscious, and there have been no customers."

Watanuki sat up further. "Yuuko, did you…do something?"

Yuuko laughed and threw her arms back as if to stretch, putting her weight on his legs entirely. "Look who knows me so well!"

Yuuko reached up and fit her thin arms around Watanuki's neck and he fell back when she shifted her weight onto him—not because she was heavy, but because she was kissing him, and the suddenness of it surprised him.

It lasted more than a second, too—Yuuko had time to shift herself so that she was fully lying on top of him. Watanuki got over the shock enough to place his hand on her waist, but then she stopped and just looked down at him with that cat-like grin of hers.

Watanuki spent about one seconds being horrified with how improper this was, then another wondering what Yuuko would do if he flipped over so that he was on top of her, and a third second being horrified again, this time with himself and how indecent his mind had become. Then Yuuko spoke.

"It must be pretty bad for you to be bound by this store's balance system. I'm not bound to this balance," she shifted again so that one of her legs was bent against his side and one of her fingers was trailing down his chest, "but I was at one time, wasn't I?" Watanuki's eyes widened. "In that cave, you said, 'I can't lose you again,' remember?" Watanuki pushed himself into a sitting position, but Yuuko didn't get off him. She just bent her other leg so that she was pressing her thighs against his hips and maintained eye contact the entire time. "Ever since that first time I saw you in my dream, I've felt that you were familiar. You knew me once before, didn't you? The things I want to remember are from a past life, aren't they? And that's why you called me 'Yuuko'—because that's what you knew me as?"

"I…" Watanuki began, but he didn't know what to say.

"What was I to you, Watanuki?"

Watanuki made a face that made Yuuko wonder if he might cry, but he didn't. He wrapped his arms around her and held her as tightly as he could. He didn't know what else to do. What was he supposed to say? That he was sorry he didn't tell her? She would probably just hit him. Would this change things? Maybe not, considering the way she had just kissed him, and the way she was sitting on him now. Her arms were around his neck again, and he could feel her fingers moving through his hair. So what did he tell her? He wasn't going to lie to her…but if he told her the truth, would she push him away?

"You were important," he finally murmured against her shoulder. "You're more important to me than anything."

Yuuko wondered what kind of expression Watanuki would make if she told him how scared she had been when he wouldn't open his eyes, no matter how hard she had tried to wake him up. Maybe he would kiss her like he had in the cave—she was still shocked that someone as uptight and sincere as Watanuki would do that. Maybe he would shock her again by doing something more. That would be funny.

And Watanuki might have even without Yuuko's provocation, but the sense went off in his head.

"Someone's entered the store," he said quietly.

"Mmm," Yuuko agreed. "It's the people who take care of me."

Watanuki pulled away slightly so that he could look up at her questioningly.

"You remember when you asked if I was hiding from someone?" She reminded him. "Well, I was—I was hiding from my teachers."

"Teachers?" Watanuki repeated.

"I'm not the only witch in the world," Yuuko said. "My teachers raised me and taught me how to use my abilities. They've protected me and taken care of me for as long as I can remember."

"So what you told me before…?" Watanuki hedged.

"About living with relatives I don't get along with?" Yuuko confirmed. "Well, I am related to them…distantly…very distantly, and I do fight with them a lot."

"Are they here to take you?" Watanuki asked.

Yuuko giggled slightly. "I called them about that necromancer—I know you said you have friends who could help, but I couldn't just sit there and wait for you to wake up."

"That doesn't answer my question," Watanuki pressed.

Yuuko's smile changed—he didn't like it. The last time she had smiled at him like that, she had been swallowed up by the darkness. In fact, that smile made him feel sheer fear. Fear that shook his very core. Watanuki had almost forgotten what that kind of fear was like.

"I won't let them," he stated.

If nothing else, that brought back Yuuko's playfulness. "Well, aren't you being manly," she said mockingly.

Watanuki clutched Yuuko's waist and growled at her slightly—her teasing filled him with the usual impulse to yell the first words that came to mind, but he was still worried about her being taken from him by these unknown "teachers." Or worse—what if she went with them willingly?

Yuuko could sense this worry, too. Was she really so important to him? Was it she who was important to him, or was it who she had been in her passed life? Was there a difference, really, between her then and her now?

"What kind of relationship did you and I have?" Yuuko asked. Watanuki looked away from her eyes. "Do you know what fate is, Watanuki?"

His lips twitched upward slightly. "Everything is fate."

Yuuko leaned her head against Watanuki's.

"You know," Watanuki said quietly, "the last thing I said to you before was that I would be here, in this shop, waiting for you."

"Thanks for waiting," Yuuko replied. "I hope that I remember hearing that promise someday."

Watanuki closed his eyes and said something that he meant, didn't like, and that almost felt like a lie.

"I'll make sure you do."


	16. Chapter 8 P2

Eight-Part Two

Yuuko glared at the cherry tree as she angrily devoured a small pile of _manju_ buns.

Watanuki was inside, talking to her teachers—she had been dismissed like a child, and now she was sitting out on the back deck with Doumeki. They were all going to pay for that at some point, she would make sure of it.

Yuuko and Watanuki had finally come out of his room to find her teachers all seated around one of the low coffee tables with Doumeki. He had looked up—expressionless as ever—and seemed to evaluate Watanuki's physical condition without needing to ask how he was feeling.

Watanuki, however, had stopped dead as he looked at Yuuko's "teachers."

"These guys?" He had questioned disbelievingly.

"Yep," Yuuko had nodded.

"Good morning, Mr. Shopkeeper," one of them greeted.

"What the hell?!" Watanuki had demanded.

"So you do know them?" Yuuko had laughed teasingly.

There were three of them, but Watanuki only knew one—the one who had greeted him. She was slim, about the same height as him and always kept her hair cut short, straight and black. He only knew her as Eiko. The man and woman next to her were huge—not obese, but ridiculously tall. They were both pale, blond haired, and blue eyed.

"Long time no see," Eiko had said.

"Yes, it's been about…" Watanuki had trailed off and had looked at Yuuko with sudden realization—about fifteen years. He glared at Eiko accusingly—she had been friends with Yuuko before, and had known that Watanuki was waiting for her.

She had had Yuuko for fifteen years and couldn't be bothered to tell him?

"Watanuki, this is Enas," Eiko had indicated the man, "and Zeygos," she had indicated the woman.

"We're told you have a problem with a necromancer," Zeygos had said as she brushed her long hair over her shoulder and smiled in a sadistically amused way. She had such a creepy smile.

"Yeah, you know him?" Watanuki had grumbled.

"None of us have met a necromancer in centuries," Enas had told him. "I thought the practice had died out."

"So did I," Watanuki had agreed.

That was when they had dismissed Yuuko and Doumeki so that they could discuss the finer points and not have to deal with explaining anything.

Well, that's what she thought, anyway.

"I don't know much about necromancy," Watanuki admitted once Yuuko and Doumeki were gone, "but this guy was doing it on merpeople and with a piece of quartz full of a zashiki-warashi's energy."

"That is pretty strange," Eiko agreed. "We just got back from checking out the place you were at—and I must say, I'm shocked you would take a young girl there, even if she is 'Yuuko'—but it's completely cleared out. The only thing left were the bodies."

Watanuki made a disgruntled noise and glared at her. "Why didn't you tell me you had Yuuko?"

"Aren't you glad I didn't?" Eiko teased. "Now you're about the same age, aren't you? If I had brought her here when she was a baby, you would be just another middle aged man into young school girls."

"I would not be!" Watanuki yelled indignantly.

"Oh really?" Eiko grinned. "You haven't done anything indecent to her, then?"

"Of course not!" Watanuki denied furiously. God, this woman was enough like Yuuko to be her sister.

"We're getting off the point," Enas said before Eiko could continue to antagonize him. "Did you notice anything else while you were there? What did he look like? Did he say anything?"

"Mmm," Watanuki breathed as he tried to remember, "he was big—not as big as you, but way bigger than me—and I think he said the word 'Sobek' after he put that quartz in a fresh mermaid."

Enas and Zeygos glanced at each other nervously.

"What?" Eiko asked.

"Sobek is a god," Enas explained. "That's what the ancient Egyptians called the one you probably know as Suijin."

"The God of Water?" Watanuki questioned.

"The very same."

"Which means our necromancer is probably from Egypt," Zeygos continued, "and that he's trying to use the children of the water god to bring her here."

"But why?" Watanuki raised his eyebrow. "To my understanding, Suijin is a very protective parent—wouldn't killing her children just anger her?"

"Probably," Enas agreed, "which means the necromancer is also a fool."

"Then what do we do?" Eiko asked. "Report this back to the boss?"

"Boss?" Watanuki repeated suspiciously.

"Just someone with a noose around my neck," Eiko explained dismissively and turned back to Enas.

"Probably," he agreed, and then stood. "Come on, we need to take care of this before merpeople go extinct."

Zeygos also stood and wrapped her arms around one of Enas', but Eiko didn't move.

"Mind waiting for me outside?" She requested.

"Don't take too long," Zeygos said with a creepy giggle, and they left.

Watanuki looked at Eiko, and they spent a good minute just looking at each other.

"You know, Yuuko—" Eiko began, but Watanuki cut her off.

"I'm going to bring her memories back," he said.

Eiko laughed shortly and wryly. "Yeah, Jesse told me…are you sure you want to do that?"

"I already promised her I would."

"That's not what I asked."

They spent another thirty seconds staring each other down, and then Eiko sighed and tucked her hair behind her ear. "Yuuko!" She called.

Yuuko entered the room and looked between them suspiciously as she sat down next to Watanuki.

"Sweetie," Eiko continued, "first of all, I don't want to see you in a dress like that ever again—you look like a whore."

Watanuki bristled immediately and Yuuko glared sulkily, but Eiko went on before either of them could say anything.

"Second, I'm leaving you here."

_Like you could have taken her,_ Watanuki thought angrily.

"Watanuki, I'm expecting you to make sure she goes to school."

"School?" Watanuki and Yuuko both repeated, Watanuki confused, Yuuko disbelieving.

"I was homeschooling her before," Eiko explained, "but I'm going to be busy—someone's trying to stir things up again, and none of us want that." She twitched her hand, and a glazed look came over Watanuki.

Yuuko waved her hand in front of his face. No reaction. "Why did you do that?"

"Sweetie, we talked about the things you can't remember," Eiko said, ignoring her question.

"If I remember _that_ correctly," Yuuko replied with a slight glare, "we didn't so much talk about it as you told me I don't have anything to remember."

"There is nothing in your passed life that you need," Eiko insisted. "All you'll find there is heartbreak, pain, longing, and an endless amount of suffering."

"I don't believe that," Yuuko said, and Eiko raised her eyebrow. "Watanuki met me in that life—that can't have been painful."

Eiko sighed. "You're so young…"

Yuuko looked at Watanuki again. "Does he really not know what you actually look like?"

Eiko snorted delicately. "Of course not—that would just cause so much trouble."

"What is he?" Yuuko questioned as she placed a hand on his face. "He's not human, but he's not a golem or anything like that, either. He has a power in him that just keeps growing, too." She looked at her teacher. "Your illusions might not work on him much longer."

"I know," Eiko said, "and to be honest, I don't know what he is, either."

She twitched her hand again, and the glazed look faded away. Watanuki blinked and looked at her.

"What were you saying?" He asked.

"School," Eiko replied, and she stood. "Make her go—I'll be dropping by every now and then." A cat-like grin stretched across her face. "Don't do anything improper while I'm gone."

Watanuki bristled at her again, and she walked away to the front door, laughing.

Yuuko wrapped her arms around one of Watanuki's, and the look she gave him was one obviously asking what was going to happen. Watanuki sighed and leaned his head against hers.

…

Watanuki looked at the sliver that was the moon as he drank _sake_. It was times like this that he really missed Mokona—the little black fluff ball had always been useful for distracting conversation.

He couldn't stop thinking about what Eiko had said while she thought he was under the sway of her spell—what she had said about heartbreak and pain.

"Why the thoughtful look, Mr. Store Owner?"

"Good evening, Joro-Gumo," Watanuki greeted, though he didn't look at her. "I wasn't expecting you until the moon completely wanes."

"I felt good enough to come out again," Joro-Gumo told him as she sank up to him. "Where's your little princess?"

"Sleeping," Watanuki replied.

Joro-Gumo giggled and draped her arms around Watanuki. "Did you find her?"

Watanuki inhaled from his pipe before looking at her. "She was killed."

Joro-Gumo's playful smile faded away, and her expression turned very…displeased.

"Here," Watanuki handed her a piece of paper, "this will lead you to the place her body is."

Joro-Gumo looked at it for a moment, then made a scoffing noise and it caught fire. She flung it away, and the ashes floated down to the grass.

"If she's dead, there's no point in me using that," she said. "Dead bodies are meaningless to me."

Watanuki huffed, not that he was surprised. That was just like a joro-gumo.

She leaned into him, picked up his sake cup and drank it. "So what price shall I pay to you, Mr. Store Owner?"

"You already gave me that pearl," Watanuki reminded her.

"And that's enough?" Joro-Gumo questioned.

"That's enough," Watanuki confirmed.

Joro-Gumo giggled again. "You really are cute, aren't you?" She stood and stretched. "Would you like some advice, Mr. Adorable?"

Watanuki raised his eyebrow.

"Keep your little princess safe," she murmured, and flicked her long hair back in a way that made it glisten in the pale moonlight. "There's a storm coming."

"A storm, huh?" Watanuki repeated with a humorless smile. "I'll be ready."

* * *

><p>Author's Note:<p>

Just to warn you all, I probably won't be able to update for a while. I've gotten some very nice reviews for this fic—which I really appreciate, by the way—and I'll continued to work on it as soon as I can, but I have art projects, too, so I hope you'll all be patient with me.


	17. Chapter 9 P1

Nine-Part One

"Hey," one girl murmured to another, "did you know there was a little shrine out behind the school?"

"What?" The second girl questioned. "There's never been a shrine there."

"That's what I thought, too," the first girl agreed, "but I went to look for it yesterday, just to make sure, and it was there."

"Really?"

"Yes—I heard that if you offer the god something, then it would grant your wishes."

"What do you have to offer the god?"

"That depends on your wish."

…

Yuuko looked out the window as she tapped a pencil against her desk. She was bored. She had been bored for hours.

It had been about two years, now, since Yuuko had found Watanuki's shop. He had promised her teacher, Eiko, that he would make sure she went to school, and now she was seventeen and a week into her third year.

She didn't pay attention to what these "teachers" said because they never said anything that she didn't already know. She preferred to look at the cherry blossoms falling from the trees below.

It was then that she became aware of the panic in the air. She looked up at the classroom door and in a few seconds, shouting could be heard. The rest of the students and the teacher all looked at the door, too, and began to whisper to each other, ask each other if they knew what it was about.

Yuuko stood.

"Ichihara," the teacher snapped, "where do you think you're going?"

"To see what's going on," Yuuko replied without stopping to look at him.

He tried to tell her to sit back down, but she ignored him. He wasn't naturally authoritative—his grain was to follow, not to lead. Yuuko was dominant by nature, so she acted like it. The worst he would do was call her "guardian" in hopes that he might do something, but nothing more. Yuuko intimidated him—for all his snapping and verbal reprimands, he couldn't even look her in the eye.

Yuuko glided through the halls toward the source of the yells and shouts, and she stopped next to a second story window that looked over the back of the school.

There was a girl lying in the grass—she was a student, probably a first year. A couple teachers were kneeling next to her, another was standing in front of a couple other students, one of whom was crying from confusing.

Yuuko's eyebrows pulled together—the girl was dead. She looked like she had died rather painfully, too—her face was contorted in a horrifying grimace.

How had she died? Was it a heart attack?

Yuuko doubted that—she could just faintly see something sinister hanging around the girl's body. What was it? Some kind of vengeful spirit? A curse?

Yuuko almost went down there to investigate more closely, but she decided against it. She couldn't do anything for that girl now. She went back to her classroom.

"What happened?" The teacher asked despite himself.

"A girl died in the courtyard out back," Yuuko murmured.

The classroom was still for about half a second before they all started panicking, too. Some of them stood and ran out of the classroom to check for themselves, most of them just started murmuring to each other, creating an indistinct buzz.

Yuuko grabbed her bag and made for the door again.

"Ichihara," the teacher half yelled, "class is still in session!"

Yuuko looked at him, and she could see his knees start to shake. She grinned at him antagonistically, and then walked out the door. No one stopped her as she left the school—they didn't notice her. Yuuko had the very convenient ability to not be noticed when she didn't want to be.

Her high school was only a couple blocks away from the shop. Watanuki had told her that he used to go to the same school, but that was more than a hundred years ago, before it had been torn down and rebuilt.

Usually, Watanuki would walk her to school and then be waiting for her at the gate to walk her home, but since she decided to leave two hours early, he wasn't there. When she got to the shop, she found him asleep on the large couch in the back room, and a cat-like grin stretched across her face.

She put her bag down silently and tiptoed over to him. She swung one leg over him and removed his glasses and slowly sank down until her body was flat on top of his, and she kissed him.

Watanuki twitched slightly after a second and he opened his eyes.

"Yuuko," he breathed, but she just took the opportunity to kiss him harder, more deeply. He reciprocated. He wrapped his arms around her, held her firmly against himself, and was very aware of her thighs tight against either side of his hips.

Watanuki turned so that Yuuko was below him, and he let her down so that she was lying on the couch, and he kept himself propped up on one elbow so that there was a couple inches between them. She let her arms fall to either side of her head as if to leave herself open and vulnerable to him—it was a façade reminding him that he was not actually the one in control. They just looked at each other for a few seconds, him breathing a bit too heavily, her smiling provocatively. She kept her legs bent up on either side of his.

They had both grown over the last two years. Watanuki was now about six inches taller than her, and his face had become a bit thinner and longer. He could have passed for twenty. Yuuko hadn't gotten much taller, but her curvy body was even curvier.

Yuuko finally decided to break the silence. "Did you sleep well?" She asked as she moved her arms up and wrapped them around his neck loosely.

"I was speaking with a new client, actually," Watanuki replied, "until someone woke me up."

"Oh, sorry," Yuuko said in an entirely unapologetic tone. "You're just so cute when you're sleeping, I can't help it."

Watanuki glared at her teasing.

Yuuko giggled and pushed Watanuki's elbow to the side, off the edge of the couch, so that he would fall on her. His surprise made him vulnerable to attack, and she started kissing him again. She had managed to unbutton half his shirt before he pulled away, overcome by whatever ridiculous moral code he lived by.

Two years, and this was about as far as she ever got him. Yuuko didn't mind being the aggressor—she rather enjoyed it, actually—but she was getting impatient with him and his prudishness. She was both the younger one in the relationship, and she was the girl—wasn't she the one who was supposed to be pushing away?

But no, he had to be the girl about it—maybe she would just molest him at some point.

Watanuki was breathing heavily again, like he had been exercising—his heart was beating like it, too. Whether Yuuko knew it or not, it was actually quite hard for him to not take her when she was so obviously open to him. Who would say no to such a beautiful girl, ready and willing and already in his arms?

Someone who knew better.

Watanuki looked at the clock.

"You're early," he said.

"I decided to leave," Yuuko told him simply, but he looked back down at her with slight concern, hearing the trace of worry in her voice. "A girl was killed at school today."

…

Yuuko looked around the courtyard behind the school.

The area that girl had been found was taped off, and there were still people collecting evidence, even during school hours.

Well, they could collect all they wanted—they wouldn't find out what had killed the girl…but they could still have useful information.

"Excuse me," Yuuko said to one of the three investigators, and he looked up. "Has the coroner determined a cause of death yet?"

"Kid, we're…" He trailed off when he looked Yuuko in the eye, easy prey to her magic. "Heart failure."

"She had a heart attack?" Yuuko questioned.

"No, her heart just stopped," the investigator said. "The blood loss didn't help."

"How much blood did she lose?" Yuuko probed.

"About half of it," the investigator told her.

"How did she lose it?"

"Undetermined—there were no wounds."

Yuuko smiled politely and said, "Thank you," before walking away.

How did the heart of a seemingly healthy fifteen year old girl just stop? How did she just lose half her blood? What was the energy that had been hovering around her?

"Yuuko."

Yuuko turned to find Doumeki leaning out of a classroom window.

Doumeki had recently become a new history teacher at her school. It was as bad as having an uncle for a teacher.

She trotted over to him, and he asked, "What are you doing?"

"Trying to figure out what happened to that girl," Yuuko answered, and took on a look of annoyance. "I asked Watanuki to, but you know how he is—'someone has to make a wish and pay a price'."

"So you're involving yourself in something dangerous?" Doumeki questioned.

"I'll be fine," Yuuko dismissed. "Besides, on the off chance that I do get myself in trouble, Watanuki will come rescue me."

And with that, she trotted away again.

Doumeki sighed and shook his head. His great grandfather, Shizuka, used to tell him stories of how Watanuki would put himself in danger for the sake of strangers. That was before he became the shop owner, of course—he had learned how to value himself. Would Yuuko learn the same lesson?

Well, just in case she needed some guidance…

Doumeki pulled out his phone and dialed.

"Yes?" Came Watanuki's voice from the other end.

"You know Yuuko's looking into the girl who died here yesterday, right?" Doumeki asked.

Watanuki sighed. "I figured she would."

"I can't see evil spirits," Doumeki said, "so I don't know, but she seems sure that something killed that girl."

"She's probably right," Watanuki agreed quietly, "but—"

"You need someone to make a wish before you can do anything," Doumeki cut in. "Yeah, I know."

He hung up.

…

Yuuko tapped her finger against her arm, annoyed.

She was in the locker room showers, washing off the chlorine with twenty other girls. She hated gym—she hated physical activity, and she hated anyone who made her participate in physical activity.

Unfortunately, the gym teacher wasn't as easily intimidated as most of the other teachers, so she couldn't bully him into letting her do whatever she wanted.

"Hey, Yuuko," one of the other girls said, and Yuuko looked up. Her name was Risa—she was small and slim, with short brown hair and round brown eyes. "Did you see anything when you went to…when you saw that girl yesterday?"

"Yeah," Yuuko nodded. "There was some malice or something like that hanging around her—I think she might have been cursed to death."

Yuuko did not mind everyone in the world knowing what she could see. Some other kids had tried to bully her, just like kids bully anyone who's different, but, well, Yuuko simply was not the type to be bullied. Everyone in her class knew she could see ghosts—or at least that she said she could see them—and most of them just avoided her for it.

Risa was usually the same, but she looked very scared—especially after what Yuuko had just said.

"Did you know her?" Yuuko asked. "The girl who died, I mean."

Risa wrapped her arms around herself and nodded. "Her name was Katsuragi. We were both on the swim team—she had the best time out of all of us, even though she was only a freshman."

Yuuko made a contemplative noise.

"You were jealous, right?" Another girl asked snidely, and they looked at her. Yuuko didn't know her name, just that she was conniving and just downright bitchy.

"I wasn't jealous," Risa tried to say, but she was talked over.

"I heard that you went to the god and asked him to make Katsuragi disappear," the girl continued.

"God?" Yuuko repeated.

"Yeah," one of the bitchy girl's friends said. "If you offer something to the god, he'll grant your wish."

"Oh, we'd better be careful," the bitchy girl said to her friend with mock fear. "We don't want Risa to wish us dead, too—she might want to cut down the competition for Mr. Doumeki."

They walked out of the shower, then, and their laughter almost sounded more like cackling.

Yuuko looked down at Risa, who appeared to be on the verge of tears. "Doumeki?"

"Everyone likes him," Risa said defensively.

"I'm sure," Yuuko agreed with a grin. "After all, he's tall, handsome, and kind of mysterious, right?" At least, she assumed that normal girls would find him mysterious, seeing as how rarely he really spoke.

"He's also really nice," Risa mumbled. "He stops kids from picking on me—and not just me, but other kids, too."

"He's that type of person," Yuuko agreed.

"Hinagi likes him, though," Risa continued. "She threatens anyone who tries to get close to him."

"Hinagi?" Yuuko repeated.

Risa gave her a questioning look. "She we were just talking to her and Yamato…"

"Which one was which?" Yuuko asked.

"Um, Hinagi was the one with black hair," Risa told her, "and Yamato had brown."

Yuuko nodded—Yamato was the bitchy one, and Hinagi was her friend—and then snorted delicately. "Doumeki can't stand women like that."

Risa's eyes widened. "Do…do you know him outside of school? He's not—you're not dating, right?"

"My boyfriend is way more adorable than Doumeki," Yuuko said. "Doumeki is more like that annoying older cousin who spies on you at school for your parents."

"Oh," Risa nodded. She smiled slightly, blushed, and looked down. "So…do you know his type, then?"

Yuuko thought for a moment. "Probably girls like his great grandmother—a brave kind of woman who does what's right. Pure hearted, I guess, but not naive."

This didn't seem to make Risa feel better. Yuuko smiled and placed a hand on her shoulder.

"You'll find someone who's right for you," she murmured, and glanced at the spot Hinagi and her friend had disappeared around. "Can you tell me something, though?"

"Like what?" Risa asked.

"Do you know if that other girl, Katsuragi, also liked Doumeki?"

"Um," Risa hesitated, "I don't know for sure, but she probably did—everyone does."

Yuuko smiled. "And do you know where I can find this 'god'?"


	18. Chapter 9 P2

Nine-Part Two

Watanuki opened his eyes to the darkness. He took a moment to concentrate on the dream, searching for the dreamer, and he found him.

"Ah, Mr. Shopkeeper," the old man greeted.

"Good evening, Taizu," Watanuki replied, and gave a slight blow. "I'm sorry our last meeting got cut short."

"I'd wake up, too, if it was a lovely young thing calling me out," Taizu laughed.

Watanuki's smile turned annoyed. "What was it you were telling me before we lost the connection?"

"You're no fun," Taizu chided. "You could at least let this old man reminisce about his youth." Watanuki gave him an exasperated look. "Of course," the old man grinned, "you're not so young yourself, either."

"You said something about being stolen?" Watanuki prompted.

Taizu grunted humorously. "Yes, I was stolen. What's worse is that someone is using me against my will."

"Who stole you?" Watanuki asked. "Do you know where you are?"

"Somewhere with many young people," Taizu said. "There are trees—more trees than one usually sees these days. Young people come to see me, and they invoke my power to solve their petty problems without paying a proper price."

"Was it one of these young people who stole you?"

"No," Taizu growled, "that person was far too sinister. I cannot perceive his face, but he radiates destruction." The dream started to fade away. "Find me, Shopkeeper, and I shall be yours."

"I will," Watanuki murmured, both in the dream and in the store.

…

Yuuko walked into Doumeki's classroom. He was alone, sitting at his desk, and appeared to be grading papers. He didn't look up to see who had come in, or react at all when Yuuko wrapped her arms around his neck and leaned into him.

"You're really popular with girls, you know that?" Yuuko informed him.

"Sorry for being popular," Doumeki said dismissively.

Yuuko sighed and poked his cheek. "You and Watanuki are just alike—no fun."

"Shouldn't Watanuki be outside and waiting for you by now?" Doumeki asked.

"Probably," Yuuko agreed. "You going to come over today?"

"Maybe," Doumeki allowed.

Yuuko nodded. "I just wanted to warn you to be careful—something's going on, and you might get dragged into it."

"I'll be careful," Doumeki promised, still dismissive.

Neither of them noticed that they were being watched from the slightly open door. Yuuko left, unaware that she was being glared at, or that she was being followed.

Doumeki was right—Watanuki was outside, waiting by the gate. Some of the girls who passed him glanced and giggled at his kimono, but he took no notice of them. Yuuko came out the front door, trotted over to him, and happily kissed him on the cheek, but he didn't respond.

He was distracted by the faint aura hanging around the school. It appeared to be thickest from the back, in the wooded area.

"Kind of menacing, huh?" Yuuko commented when she saw what he was looking at. "It's been there since that girl was killed."

Watanuki looked down at her, then. "You haven't been—"

"Investigating?" Yuuko guessed.

"Doing anything dangerous," Watanuki corrected.

Yuuko huffed. "Of course not, but I'm not going to let something kill kids and suck them dry."

Watanuki's eyebrow twitched. He grabbed Yuuko's hand, and as they started off in the direction of the shop, he asked, "What do you mean, suck them dry?"

"There were police there today," Yuuko said. "One of them told me that according to the coroner, the girl's heart just stopped, and half her blood was gone, but they can't figure out _how_ the blood is gone. Apparently she had no wounds."

Watanuki made an annoyed noise and growled at the sidewalk.

"What's wrong?" Yuuko asked.

Watanuki sighed. "I was talking to a customer—the same one I was talking to yesterday. Its name is Taizu."

"It?" Yuuko repeated.

"It's a scroll," Watanuki explained. "It contains a bit of soul from Emperor Taizu of Song."

"Chinese emperor from the nine hundreds, right?" Yuuko confirmed.

"Yes," Watanuki nodded, and they walked past the fence into the shop's yard. "The thing about this scroll is that if you get ahold of it, with the right spells, you can release Taizu's soul and use his power, so long as you pay a price."

Yuuko's eyes widened slightly. "I heard today about a god that some of the students started going to—one said that there's a new shrine back in the wooded area. They said that if you offer something, the god will grant your wishes."

"In exchange for your blood," Watanuki nodded. "Someone stole Taizu, and I'm guessing they left him where someone would find him and inadvertently use his power."

"But no one lost any blood," Yuuko argued, "only the dead girl—and I doubt she wished for her own death."

"I doubt that, too," Watanuki agreed. "Taizu told me that he wasn't being used properly—that his will wasn't his own. My guess is that whoever stole him is manipulating his power to prevent him from taking his proper price."

"But why would anyone do that?" Yuuko questioned. "And put him where kids would find him, no less?"

Watanuki ran his fingers through his hair, frustrated. "I don't know."

Yuuko put her hand on his face, and gave him a calm, reassuring smile.

"Don't worry, Watanuki," she murmured. "Everything will be alright."

Watanuki placed his hand over hers and leaned into it. "Yes," he agreed, "everything will be alright."

Yuuko smiled wider. She reached up, wound her arms around Watanuki's neck, and started kissing him. They were in the front room, so as she started to kiss him harder—as he wrapped his arms around her and reciprocated her force—she started to push him back toward the large couch.

She shoved him down onto it, and settled herself so that she was straddling him, and the kissing continued. Watanuki arms were hesitant around her now—he knew where this was going, but he didn't stop it. He didn't want to.

No—he knew better.

Watanuki grabbed Yuuko's hips and pushed her away slightly, closer to his knees. Yuuko huffed, annoyed, and crossed her arms while Watanuki tried to calm his heartbeat with will power.

"Watanuki," Yuuko growled, "give me one good reason why not."

"I don't…" Watanuki tried to say, but he couldn't find the words.

"Don't what?" Yuuko demanded childishly. "Don't want me? Don't want to hurt me?" Watanuki didn't respond, and Yuuko sighed. "Is it because this isn't the kind of relationship we had before?"

Watanuki looked up at her, but still didn't speak.

"Are you afraid I won't want this anymore, after you give me back my memories?" Yuuko guessed.

Watanuki's look turned almost pleading.

"If that's what you're afraid of, then I don't need those memories," Yuuko said. "I'll take back the wish."

Watanuki smiled humorlessly. He pulled her close again, into a soft hug, and said, "Once a wish is made, it can't be unmade."

Yuuko huffed petulantly into his shoulder, and they stayed like that for a little while, in silence.

When Yuuko noticed that silence, she asked, "Where are Maru and Moro?"

"Sleeping," Watanuki told her.

Yuuko made a contemplative noise. "They've been sleeping a lot lately."

…

Doumeki did come to the shop later that evening, and he and Watanuki talked about this "shrine" and Taizu as Yuuko watered the plants. The fact was, Watanuki didn't want Yuuko to get any ideas about taking care of this problem herself.

"I'm going to wait until the new moon," Watanuki told Doumeki. "That's when Taizu's power is at its weakest, so there's less likely to be trouble."

"The new moon is two days away," Doumeki pointed out.

"I know," Watanuki said.

Doumeki glanced out the window, at Yuuko. "I'll keep an eye on her at school."

"I know," Watanuki smiled slightly. "I'll go get some _sake_."


	19. Chapter 9 P3

Nine-Part Three

Yuuko crept through the store silently. She looked in Watanuki's bedroom to make sure he was sleeping—which he was, and he was so cute that Yuuko really had to try to resist jumping him—and left.

She wasn't going to wait for Watanuki to do whatever he was going to do. Time was of the essence. Whoever was using that scroll, they were putting kids in danger, and Doumeki could easily become the center of it. Yuuko couldn't let that happen.

She merrily skipped to the school as if she didn't have a care in the world, silent with her thin little flats, skipped around the school building, and looked at the oppressing energy around her. She concentrated on it, looked for where it was thickest, the most condensed…and followed it.

The further Yuuko went, the thicker the miasma got, and the deeper the woods became. It was a wonder any normal human could get close enough to this scroll to use it—Yuuko was actually starting to feel a little sick, but she didn't stop. After a few more feet, she noticed a small wooden structure.

She sighed with relief. Now all she had to do was find the scroll, and she could give it to Watanuki in the morning. Not only would she successfully prevent the further misuse of a dangerous enchanted object, but it would probably also get Watanuki to ease up on his over protectiveness.

Yuuko didn't notice the heap on the ground. She tripped over it, and let out a squeak of surprise, but caught herself with the shrine. She looked back to see what she had stepped on, and her eyes widened in horror—it was a girl.

"Hey," Yuuko said quietly, "are you okay?"

She pushed herself back up, knelt down next to the girl, and turned her over—it was that girl, Hinagi.

Yuuko stood back up and shuffled away. The body was still slightly warm, so she can't have been dead for very long. Yuuko gulped, and looked at the shrine. It was really dark, and she had forgotten a flashlight, so she had to look very closely, but she eventually found a compartment…which was empty.

Well, now what?

Yuuko could feel that something unpleasant had been hidden there, so what had happened to it? Had a student taken it? Was that why Hinagi was dead? Yuuko's eyes widened slightly—was it Risa?

A twig snapped, and Yuuko looked up in time to see the shadowed figure of a girl disappear behind a tree.

"Stop," Yuuko ordered. She wondered vaguely if the girl could feel the vibrations of her word spell as she went to see who it was—not Risa, fortunately, but the girl Yuuko saw shocked her even more. "Yamato?"

"It's mine!" Yamato snapped, and Yuuko looked at the thin, rolled up wall scroll she was clutching to her chest.

"You're the one who killed that freshman?" Yuuko questioned. "And Hinagi? She was your friend, wasn't she?"

"I just wanted them out of the way," Yamato yelled, "I didn't know it would kill that girl!"

"But you did know when you came here with Hinagi," Yuuko surmised with mild contempt.

"She wouldn't leave Mr. Doumeki alone!" Yamato screamed defensively, displaying all the markers of a person who knew what they were doing was wrong, but couldn't stop. "I've see you, too! You hang all over Mr. Doumeki, and then go and mess around with some other guy!"

Yuuko raised her eyebrow. Was she talking about Watanuki?

"Hey, God!" Yamato shriek at the scroll. "Her, too! Get Ichihara out of the way, too!"

Taizu manifested from the scroll with dead eyes. Yamato seemed just as shocked by this as Yuuko. Neither of them spoke, nothing made a sound for a good three seconds, and then Taizu turned toward Yamato.

"It cannot be done," he cackled.

"What do you mean?" Yamato demanded. "She's in the way! Get rid of her!"

"It cannot be done," Taizu repeated.

Yuuko's eyebrows pulled together as Yamato's face contorted in pain. She dropped the scroll, but Taizu didn't disappear.

"Her power far exceeds my own," he continued, "so it cannot be done. You will pay the price for that."

Yamato's mouth was wide open, as if she was screaming, but she was silent.

"What are you doing?" Yuuko asked, a bit shakily.

"She pays the price in soul," Taizu murmured, almost as if he was amused.

Yuuko watched, horrified, as solid energy started to feed from Yamato to Taizu. "Stop!" She ordered, knowing it would be useless.

Taizu laughed. Yuuko tried desperately to think of something—anything—that she could do to stop this. She couldn't cut off the connection. She didn't bring anything with which to seal Taizu. She couldn't offer her own soul in place of Yamato's. What was she supposed to do?

Yamato dropped, lifeless. Taizu, cackling again, disappeared back into the scroll. A tear slid down Yuuko's cheek.

She had done nothing. The girl may have been unpleasant, but she was just a kid. Yuuko should have saved her…should have, but couldn't. There was nothing Yuuko could have done. Yamato had sealed her own fate. Yuuko knew this, but that knowledge didn't make it any easier to deal with feeling like she had failed. She had failed to help someone right in front of her.

Yuuko picked the scroll up and wiped her tear away. The only thing she could do now was make sure no one else fell victim to it. She turned, ready to run all the way back to the shop, but then froze—a man was there, standing only a couple feet from her.

He was tall, and Caucasian. He had blue eyes, icy with sadistic amusement, and snow white hair. Yuuko could tell from his aura that he was a shaman.

"Who are you?" She asked.

"Destruction," he answered. "I am Hakai."

Yuuko's eyebrow twitched—something stirred in her memory, but she couldn't grasp it.

"You have something of mine," he informed her.

Yuuko tightened her grip on the scroll. "Is it yours? Or are you the one who stole it?"

"One cannot steal from a dead man," Hakai replied, and a depraved grin contorted his expression.

His hand twitched, and just like that, blood shot out of Yuuko from every direction. Her dress ripped where invisible blades slashed at her. She screamed silently, but she hadn't lost her senses to the pain. Before Hakai could take a step toward her, she lashed her arm out, and hit him with a dose of her own energy—enough to knock him senseless—and she ran.

She had never met a shaman like that—she didn't even know shaman could _do_ anything like that. What was that guy? What did he want? Why had he stolen the scroll, and why had he put it where kids like Yamato could find it? She didn't go back to find out.

Yuuko didn't stop running until she was back in the shop.

"Watanuki!" She yelled, breathing heavily, as she sank to the floor. Her vision was starting to blur. "Watanuki! Maru! Moro!"

Her cries did manage to wake them. Maru and Moro got to her first. They both cried, "Mistress!" when they saw her covered in her own blood. Watanuki came around the corner a second later, and his eyes widened in horror. Yuuko's last thought was that Watanuki looked as if his deepest fear had manifested before him, and then she passed out.

…

It took a minute before Yuuko realized she was lying in a bed, and she opened her eyes. She was in her room. It was dark out, so either she hadn't been asleep long, or she had been asleep for at least twenty hours. She looked to the left, and she saw Watanuki sitting in a chair, staring at her with an unreadable look in his eyes.

Yuuko sat up. She could feel the bandages wrapped around her, and feel the cuts under them. She exhaled slowly, and concentrated for a moment on healing her own wounds. Oddly enough, it wasn't as easy as healing other peoples' wounds, so it took longer. Watanuki didn't speak until she was done, and started to remove the now unnecessary bandages.

"You could have gotten yourself killed," he murmured.

"Everyone runs that risk every day to some degree," Yuuko replied.

She was sure Maru and Moro had been the ones to change her into the white sleeping kimono, and she knew she was entirely naked under it, but she undid it anyway to get to the bandages around her torso. To her surprise, Watanuki didn't look away. His cheeks colored slightly, but he kept staring at her determinedly. It actually made her feel self-conscious—_really_ self-conscious—but she continued to remove her kimono, her hands now shaking, and pushed the comforter away so she could get to the bandages around her legs.

"It wasn't Taizu who did that to you," Watanuki said quietly. "I went to the school to see if I could find anything. The only thing there was the bodies of two girls whose souls he ate."

Yuuko nodded, and let the last bandage fall to the floor. "I couldn't save them."

Watanuki lowered his eyes for a moment. "It would be nice if we could save everyone in the world, but that is not possible." He looked at her again. "Taizu told me what happened up until he ate the soul of the girl who had been using him."

Yuuko knew what he was asking. "The guy who stole the scroll showed up. I don't know how, but he…he just cut me." She looked at her scarless body. "I don't think he was trying to do any real damage—I think he was just trying to scare me into giving him the scroll. I knocked him out." She looked at Watanuki. "He was only a shaman. He said his name was Hakai."

Watanuki decided he could worry about that later. He stood, and sat down on the bed next to her.

Yuuko started to tremble a little all over. She was completely naked—he could see every inch of her, entirely exposed. She wouldn't submit to shyness, though—she wouldn't be feeling so bashful if he would just do it for her, like usual. He wasn't acting teasable, so Yuuko couldn't tease him. She didn't know how to act in this situation.

A part of Watanuki did feel the compulsion to cover Yuuko up, to shield her from his eyes, but there was also an impulse that was more demanding at the moment.

"You went and did what my customer asked of me," Watanuki informed her. "You've started to tip the scales."

"What do you mean?" Yuuko asked, genuinely curious.

"I told you that once you've done enough work, I will restore your memories," Watanuki reminded her. "That's started to take effect."

Yuuko raised her eyebrow. "Completing customers' requests counts as that?"

"Yes," Watanuki replied, though sounded as though he wasn't really paying attention to their conversation anymore.

He threaded his fingers through Yuuko's silky hair, and watched as it slid away and out of his palm like a black stream.

"Watanuki?" Yuuko questioned unsurely, and he looked her in the eye. "You're acting strange."

Watanuki grabbed Yuuko's waist, pulled her close, and kissed her hard for more than a few seconds. When he pulled away, he looked at her with all the fear, fury, worry, and love that was possible for a person to feel.

"I can't lose you," he murmured, and kissed her again, so deeply that it was getting difficult for Yuuko to breathe after a couple seconds.

He took his glasses off and shifted, still with his tight grip on her, and pressed her down against the mattress. Yuuko moved her legs as he went so that her quivering thighs were on either side of his hips. Her hands were in perfect position to undo his sash, and she fumbled with the knot until she got it undone. Again, to her surprise, Watanuki did nothing to stop this. He pulled away slightly and started to kiss her neck instead, and Yuuko took in a ragged breath.

By all rights, he should be the one asking her the question, but she was the one who murmured, "Are you sure you want to do this?"

"Every day," Watanuki murmured back, and he made his way down to her ample breasts.

Yuuko let out a pleasant noise, almost a giggle, as he nipped and sucked her nipples. He wasn't really sure if he was doing it right, he was just going off pieces of advice Haruka had given him over the years—ones he had gotten very flustered at at the time, but he was grateful for them now.

That voice in the back of Watanuki's mind told him that he shouldn't do this, but he didn't care. When he saw Yuuko bleeding on the floor like that…it was like watching her disappear into the sheer blackness all over again. He needed to confirm in every way that she was still with him—that she was his, and would be his forever.

He straightened back up on his knees and slid his kimono off, and let it fall to the floor. Her legs were still on either side of him, and she automatically tried to press them together when he looked at the area between them, but slid his hands up her thighs, keeping a firm grip on them, until he reached the middle.

It took him a moment, but, guided by the moans and mewls that escaped Yuuko's lips, he figured out which spot was best to press down on, and swirl his thumb around.

After a few seconds, he had Yuuko panting. Her back was arched, her eyes were shut tight, she was clutching one of the pillows with a death grip, her legs were tensed and firm against his waist. He could feel how wet she was getting, and he kept going, watching her every reaction. After a minute, Yuuko's eyes shot open again, and she cried out with shock and pleasure. Watanuki kept going, not sure if that meant he was supposed to stop, but the ways she started to squirm told him she couldn't take any more.

"Oh my…" She breathed as she came down from the high, and propped herself up on her elbows. "If I'd know it felt like that, I would have jumped you months ago."

Watanuki chuckled quietly, moved her leg further to the side, and eased himself inside her, trying to be as gentle as possible. She was plenty stimulated, and very tight, and he moaned quietly as he went deeper, until he was all the way in. He looked at Yuuko's face—her eyes were closed again, and her jaw was tight.

"Are you alright?" He asked, already panting a little himself.

Yuuko opened her eyes slightly and nodded. Watanuki lowered himself over her again, and kissed her as he started his slow thrusts. He was still trying to be gentle, but it wasn't long before he lost any real sense of himself. He pushed himself up and gripped her arms for better leverage, and just watched her. Was she tossing her head like that from pain or pleasure? He couldn't tell, but he didn't stop, he just went faster.

It wasn't long before he broke, and shuttered to a halt—the feeling was new to him, too, and he agreed with Yuuko. If he had known, he would have had her the first time she made the advance. What was even more intoxicating was the solid feeling that she was his—she was there, in his grasp, and she was his.

He pulled out of her, and fell to the side. He held her in his arms like that, both of them trying to catch their breath.

"Don't put yourself in danger like that again," Watanuki requested quietly.

"I won't leave you alone, Watanuki," Yuuko murmured back. "I'm not going anywhere."

Watanuki just held her all the tighter, and they fell asleep like that, in each other's arms.

* * *

><p>Author's Note:<p>

It's been a while since I've updated this sorry. My apologies and thanks to all those who are following it. I will try to consistently update as often as I can.


	20. Chapter 10

Ten

"Ready to go?" Watanuki asked as he went through Yuuko's open door.

"Almost," Yuuko replied. She just had to finish twisting her hair up into a loose bun, and held it in place with a few butterfly-shaped clips. "Okay."

"You're beautiful," Watanuki told her, and kissed her lightly. "Let's go." They walked out of her room, and into the kitchen to grab the _bento_ he had put together. "We'll be back later," he said to Maru and Moro as they made their way to the front door.

"Be good while we're gone," Yuuko added, and kissed their foreheads.

"Maru and Moro will sleep," they said in unison, and ran off.

Yuuko made a slightly worried noise. "They really have been doing that a lot lately."

"I suppose," Watanuki allowed, "but they've always slept a lot."

Yuuko continued to look a bit worried at the spot Maru and Moro disappeared around, but she looked forward and smiled when Watanuki grabbed her hand, and they left the shop.

"Isn't it a bit late to visit the temple?" Yuuko asked. "Old people should be asleep at this hour."

"Yes," Watanuki agreed.

"Like you," Yuuko added teasingly before he could continue. "An old man like you should be asleep, Watanuki."

Watanuki bristled at her. "Children like you should also be in bed, as you have school in the morning."

Yuuko grinned. "Did you just admit to pedophilia?" Watanuki made an infuriated noise, and she laughed. "I'm sorry," she said, and wrapped her arms around his, "you're just so cute when you're angry."

"I'm glad you find it so amusing," Watanuki snapped, and she laughed again.

A cloud moved, and they both stopped and looked up at the night sky, at the full moon shining down on them.

"It's a good night to drink _sake_ with friends," Yuuko murmured.

"Indeed," Watanuki agreed.

They started to walk forward again, but then a smell came to them.

"What's that?" Yuuko wondered aloud. "It smells so good."

Watanuki smiled. "The oden stand," he murmured, and started to pull her along, to the source of the smell.

"What oden stand?" Yuuko asked, but then it came into view. "That cart is in a different space."

"Yes, it is," Watanuki confirmed, and as they entered that space, the owner of the stand poked his head around the back to look at them.

"Ah, Watanuki," he greeted happily, "it's been a while—it's good to see you out of the shop. Come and sit down."

"Hello, Kitsune," Watanuki replied as he and Yuuko ducked under the hanging cloth. "How is your father?"

"He's enjoying his old age," Kitsune replied, and looked at Yuuko. "Have we met before, Miss? You seem familiar."

"I don't remember ever meeting any fox spirits," Yuuko said.

Watanuki smiled slightly. "Your father was a friend of Yuuko's, wasn't he?"

"Ah," Kitsune nodded with a laugh, "that's right, the previous owner of your shop."

Yuuko made a contemplative noise. "So I knew fox spirits in my past life?" She noticed something twitching, then, out of the corner of her eye, and she looked down—there was a ball of fluff there.

She slid off the stool, reached down, and grabbed it, only for it to let out a cry of surprise. Yuuko, on the other hand, squealed in delight and held it tight to her chest. "A baby fox spirit! He's so cute!"

"Yuuko," Watanuki reprimanded, "don't just grab other people's kids."

"Father!" The little fox spirit cried, and tried to push away from Yuuko, but his little arms were too weak.

"Calm down, my son," Kitsune said easily, "they are friends."

Yuuko sat back down next to Watanuki, still keeping her hold on the little fox, and Watanuki sighed.

"I'm sorry," he murmured.

"Don't be," Kitsune dismissed, "he's just shy."

"Like you were at his age?" Watanuki questioned humorously.

Kitsune laughed. "I suppose I was, wasn't I? Father says the same things."

The little fox gasped slightly at that, and Watanuki looked at him. "Then I can be like Father when I grow up?" He asked.

"I'm sure you will be," Watanuki answered with a warm smile.

The little fox spirit blushed and fidgeted happily, still cradled in Yuuko's arms.

"So where were you headed?" Kitsune asked. "You humans have things called 'dates,' don't you? Were you doing that?"

"Sort of," Yuuko allowed. "We were going to our friend's temple."

"Doumeki's temple," Watanuki elaborated. "Do you remember it? I asked you to take this cart there once."

"Ah, yes," Kitsune nodded. "That place was full of pure energy—almost impossible to come across in the human world these days."

"Indeed," Watanuki agreed. "Shall we trade?" He held up the _bento_ he had made with a smile.

"Certainly," Kitsune smiled as well, and started putting oden into his own _bento_ box.

"Human food?" The little fox questioned.

"It's okay," Yuuko assured him. "Everything Watanuki makes is good." The little fox still looked nervous. "Have you only had your father's cooking?"

"And Mother's, and Grandfather's," he allowed.

"How is your wife?" Watanuki asked Kitsune.

"She's doing well," he answered with a trace of the bashfulness that had been so prominent when he was young. "She's at home, taking care of Father."

"What a good wife you have," Watanuki commented.

"I thank the heavens every day that I have her," Kitsune nodded. "Here you are." He handed Watanuki the oden _bento_.

"And here you are," Watanuki handed his _bento_ over, and then stood.

Yuuko stood as well, and gave the little fox back to his father.

"Have a safe night," Kitsune said with a slight bow, "and my regards to the Doumeki's."

And with that, the cart disappeared.

"What a nice fox spirit," Yuuko commented.

"He is," Watanuki agreed.

"You watched him grow up?" Yuuko questioned.

"I did," Watanuki confirmed. "He was just like that little one when I first met him."

"He must have been just as adorable," Yuuko decided. "I can't wait to remember him."

Watanuki smiled and laughed lightly. "Come on—they're probably wondering where we are."

They started off again, and after a couple minutes, made it to the temple.

"Finally," Shizuka said when they came in. "What took you so long?"

"What kind of greeting is that?" Watanuki countered.

"We found a fox spirit with an oden cart," Yuuko told him excitedly.

"Fox spirit oden, huh?" Shizuka mused.

They went out to the courtyard, where Kohane, Himawari, Sakura, and Syaoran were sitting around a table.

"Good evening," Kohane and Sakura greeted at the same time Himawari and Syaoran said, "Hey, Watanuki, Yuuko."

"Good evening," Watanuki replied.

"Hey," Yuuko chirped, "guess what? We got fox spirit oden!"

"Oh," Kohane murmured, surprised, "we haven't had that in a while."

"Fox spirit oden?" Sakura repeated.

"I've never had it, either," Himawari shrugged.

"No, you have," Shizuka disagreed.

"That nice young fox spirit delivered some to our wedding," Kohane reminded her, and grabbed Shizuka's hand.

Himawari couldn't seem to remember.

Yuuko looked around as she and Watanuki sat down next to Sakura and Syaoran, and asked, "Where's Doumeki?"

"He should be back soon," Kohane said. "He was called away to exorcise a spirit."

Yuuko made a contemplative noise. "Will he be alright? He can't see spirits, after all."

"Not being able to see doesn't mean he isn't able to exorcise," Watanuki said, and he glanced at Shizuka's left hand, where there had once been a ring made from the wood of a peach tree. "Besides, he has a good tool to use for exorcism."

Doumeki ran his thumb over his finger where the ring used to be, until he had given it to his great grandson, and looked up at the full moon for a moment, but then sat down next to Kohane.

"Oden," he said at Watanuki expectantly.

Watanuki made an infuriated noise. "If you want something, ask for it properly."

Himawari and Kohane laughed quietly. Watanuki started to distribute the oden around the table. Shizuka poured _sake_. Doumeki returned and joined them. The full moon continued to shine down on them, undisturbed by any clouds. None of them were really aware that they were being watched.


	21. Chapter 11 P1

Eleven-Part One

Yuuko stirred sleepily, and she felt an arm tighten around her, pulling her bare back tight up against a man's bare front. She felt the brush of lips against her shoulder, and she turned her head and looked up sleepily, expecting to see Watanuki, but…who was this? He looked like Watanuki, but he was older, with long hair.

"Good morning," he murmured.

Yuuko blinked a couple times, rubbed at her eyes, and then looked again—no, that was definitely Watanuki.

"Something wrong?" He asked.

"No," Yuuko yawned, "you just looked like you had long hair for a second."

"Long hair?" Watanuki repeated.

Yuuko nodded, and shifted so she was lying on her back rather than her side. "It made you look really annoying."

"Annoying?" Watanuki questioned, but before he could decide whether or not she was making fun of him, she wrapped her arms around his neck and pulled him down.

Yuuko kept one hand knotted in Watanuki's hair to keep him from escaping while she kissed him. She shifted one of her legs so she could wrap them around his hips, and arched her back to press her breasts more firmly against his chest. He was the one on top of her, and yet she was still the one in control.

When Yuuko pulled his head back slightly to breathe, Watanuki went and started to kiss down her neck, to her breasts, and she mewled happily. She could feel Watanuki hardening against her already.

Not that it took much to get Watanuki going with Yuuko. Just the thought of being one with her was enough to get him started. He knew that really, right now, he should be telling her that she needed to get ready for school. That would have been responsible. He knew that, but he didn't care—not when he had her in his arms, naked and demanding his complete attention.

He trailed his fingers down the curves of her waist, shifted slightly so that there was some space between his body and Yuuko's, and his fingers continued until they reached the point between her thighs. He kept himself propped up on one elbow, and watched her face as he worked her over until he felt wetness all around his fingers. He shifted her leg to the side, and slowly pushed himself in.

Yuuko moaned quietly and invitingly, and tilted her head back against the mattress. She hooked her ankles behind his lower back, and her spine curved up again against the pleasure of his slow, purposeful thrusts. He gripped her wrists on either side of her head, and picked up his pace. She unhooked her ankles after a minute, giving him permission to go faster, and he was egged on by her high pitched moans, as if she was eating something delicious.

He leaned down after a minute, and buried his face in her neck and loose hair. They were both nearly to the breaking point, and after a few more seconds, they came almost simultaneously.

Watanuki let go of Yuuko's wrists, slid his arms between her and the mattress, and just held her like that as he caught his breath. Yuuko, also breathing heavily, wrapped her arms around his neck again, and pressed her lips against his shoulder.

They both would have been perfectly happy and content to just stay like that forever, holding each other close, but time didn't stop for them. They stayed like that for only a couple minutes, just breathing, but then Watanuki pushed himself back up and said, "You need to get ready for school."

Yuuko huffed at him. "I don't want to."

"You still need to go," Watanuki replied as he sat back.

"Grandpa Shizuka told me that you dropped out of school by this point," Yuuko grumbled, and sat up as well.

"I did not drop out," Watanuki corrected, "I just couldn't leave the shop."

Yuuko gave him a sulky expression, but got out of the bed, and started to put her uniform on. Watanuki got dressed as well.

Watanuki had recently moved Yuuko's wardrobe into his bedroom. She slept in there with him every night now, anyway, so there was no point in her walking all the way to the other end of the house—naked—just to get dressed. "Watanuki's room" had become "their room."

"Hey, Watanuki," Yuuko murmured once they were both done, and she wound her arms around his neck again. "What's the point of going to school if I already know everything they teach?"

"The point is mostly to keep Eiko off my back," Watanuki replied, "but also…" He tried to think of something, but he actually came up empty. It wasn't like she had made any friends, and she probably wouldn't because she seemed to enjoy scaring the teenagers.

"So that's the only reason?" Yuuko questioned, annoyed, and pushed him back down on the bed. "You make me go to school so you don't have to put up with Eiko?"

"You would probably like it better if you let yourself make some friends," Watanuki pointed out.

"I'm very friendly," Yuuko replied childishly. "It's not like I avoid people, I'm just not going to pretend to be someone I'm not—if people don't like who I am, then so be it."

Watanuki couldn't really argue with that.

"Besides," she continued, "even if I did make friends, it's not like I could just bring them here to play, right?"

"That's true," Watanuki allowed—only customers could enter the shop.

"I don't want to go," Yuuko complained, childish again. "It's boring—I'd rather spend all day here with you."

Watanuki blushed slightly, and wrapped his arms around her, too. It was really hard to not just give her what she wanted when she put it like that—especially because he would rather keep her with him all day, too. He would rather keep her where he knew she was safe and where he could have her within arm's reach at all times.

Before either of them said anything more, though, a sense went off in Watanuki's head, telling him that someone had crossed through the fence. Yuuko had become so attuned with the shop and all the magic in and around it that she could sense it, too.

"A customer this early in the morning?" She questioned.

"We should go greet them," Watanuki said, and pushed himself up into a sitting position, though kept one arm around Yuuko's waist to keep her from falling.

Yuuko gave Watanuki a quick kiss, and then hopped off him and trotted out of the room. She found the customer in the entry way, looking thoroughly confused as he glanced around the place. He looked forward when he noticed Yuuko, and she tilted her head to the side.

What was such a young boy doing in the shop? He couldn't have been more than twelve or thirteen years old. Why were his clothes so dirty and tarnished? He looked like he had been playing around outside for hours—had he gotten lost and was wondering around all last night?

More importantly…was he human? She wasn't sure…

"What is this place?" He asked.

"This place is a shop," Watanuki replied behind Yuuko, and she looked up at him.

"A shop?" The boy questioned.

"Yes," Watanuki said. "It's a shop where wishes are granted. The fact that you're here means that you have a wish."

"A wish?" The boy mused, and thought for a moment, but then smiled at Watanuki. "I guess if I had a wish, it would be to find myself."


	22. Chapter 11 P2

Eleven-Part Two

Yuuko looked absently out the window.

She was at school, now, and she was completely ignoring Doumeki's lecture. She was too busy thinking about that boy.

He had simply made his request to Watanuki—"find me"—and then left, saying he was going to go play. He hadn't given any explanation to what that was supposed to mean, or even where they were supposed to look.

She sighed. It bothered her quite a bit that she wasn't sure whether or not that boy was human. She was fairly certain he hadn't been a ghost, but maybe he was something like one? Was there something in-between a ghost and a living being?

Yuuko didn't notice when the bell rang, signaling the start of lunch, nor did she notice her classmates leave. She just continued to stare out the window.

Doumeki looked at her for a second, after the rest of his students had vacated, before saying, "Yuuko." She looked at him, and then around the classroom, and then back at him. "What's wrong?"

Yuuko made a pleasant noise as she stretched, and then stood. "A customer came into the shop today."

"A customer?" Doumeki questioned. "What kind?"

"I'm not sure," Yuuko admitted. "I think he was human, but I'm not sure. He almost seemed like a ghost, but I could definitely sense living energy."

"What did he wish for?" Doumeki probed.

Yuuko looked out the window and leaned against it. "He asked Watanuki to find him."

Doumeki raised his eyebrow. "What does that mean?"

"I don't know," Yuuko shrugged. "He was just a kid. After he made his wish, he ran off saying he was going to go play."

"Just a kid?" Doumeki repeated. "Maybe it's supposed to be a game."

"You mean like hide and seek?" Yuuko confirmed. "Maybe…but a kid wouldn't have been able to come into the shop just to wish for a game from Watanuki."

"Unless he _wasn't_ really human," Doumeki pointed out. "Did he say where to look?"

Yuuko shook her head. "He just said 'find me' and then 'I'm going to go play'."

Yuuko was still looking out the window, and across the street from the school she saw a couple elementary aged kids running after each other on the sidewalk. They crossed another street and ran into the small grassy area on the corner, and a thought occurred to her.

"He said he was going to go play," she murmured, more to herself than to Doumeki. "Kids go to play at parks…so maybe he wants us to find the park he's playing at."

"Yuuko?" Doumeki questioned, not sure he liked the light that entered her eyes.

"You're going to the shop today, right?" Yuuko asked him excitedly.

"Yes," Doumeki said, "but—"

"Tell Watanuki that I'm going to find that boy," Yuuko requested, and ran out of the classroom before Doumeki could get another word in.

She kept up her quick pace all the way out of the school, but slowed down once she was out on the sidewalk herself. She tried to think of all the parks in the surrounding area. There were two or three not far from the shop, so she decided to start with those. Sure, leg-work was annoying and exhausting, but the more wishes she granted for Watanuki's customers, the sooner she would get her memories back.

The first park she went to was a waste of time—she couldn't find the boy anywhere in it, and she couldn't sense anything spiritual or supernatural lingering in it. The second park was the same—the only non-living thing hanging around there had been the ghost of a cat, which Yuuko had sent off to the afterlife before moving on to the next place.

The third park she went to also turned out nothing, and she was starting to get tired and frustrated. Had she been wrong? Where else did children go to play?

Yuuko sat on a bench and thought for a moment. She thought really hard about the boy and about his appearance.

He had definitely been dirty, so it wasn't farfetched to believe he had been playing in a park. Even his hair…

Yuuko's brow furrowed. That boy's hairstyle had been odd—its cut was a style that had been popular around twenty years ago, but not so much anymore. If that boy was a ghost, or something like a ghost, and he was playing in a park, it was quite possible that that park didn't exist anymore. It may have been built over by now.

So how was she supposed to find a park that existed in the area twenty years ago, but was no longer?

Yuuko smiled—Doumeki. He would have been a kid himself twenty years ago. She got up and quickly made her way back to the school. If she hurried, she would be able to catch him before he left.

And indeed, just as she was approaching the main entrance, Doumeki was walking out of it.

"Doumeki," she called, and he looked up and stopped.

"Did you find that kid?" He asked.

"No," Yuuko answered. "I have a question for you." Doumeki raised his eyebrow. "Were there any parks around here twenty years ago that were recently built over or anything? I would ask Watanuki, but I figure he wouldn't know, since he was still being a shut-in then."

"Hmm," Doumeki thought for a moment. "I think Grandma Kohane mentioned something recently about a park she used to take me to—something about a museum being built over it. I guess they just finished it and opened it to the public."

"You mean that new museum a few blocks away?" Yuuko questioned.

"Yeah," Doumeki nodded. "I guess it took a while to finish it because kids kept making a mess of the construction site at night." He looked at Yuuko again. "It could be dangerous for you to go there alone."

"I'll be fine," Yuuko dismissed. "Tell Watanuki I'll be home later."

"Yuuko," Doumeki said, and grabbed her arm before she could run off again. "Stop. You could get hurt again."

Yuuko gave him a mildly surprised look—he wasn't usually so insistent, nor had he ever grabbed her arm like that before—but then she smiled at him in a cat-like manner. "Well, aren't you being manly?" She poked him in the forehead, and he stumbled back, dazed. "Tell Watanuki that I'll take care of this, and I'll be home later. I want my memories back."

"Yuuko," Doumeki called after her as she went off in the direction of that museum, but she didn't stop or even look back at him. A part of him knew he should run after her, if only to make sure she was safe, but he did as she had instructed—he went to the stop to give Watanuki her message.

Maru and Moro came to greet him as he walked through the door, but they froze when they saw him. Watanuki came around the dividing wall a minute later, looking very agitated, but he froze when he saw Doumeki, too.

Watanuki got over his shock after a second, though. He approached Doumeki, and lightly brushed his fingers against his forehead. The dazed feeling faded away.

"Where's Yuuko?" Watanuki asked. "Why did she put a spell on you?"

"She said you had a new customer," Doumeki said, and pressed his fingers against his temple. "She asked me if there were any parks that had been built over recently—I told her that museum that just opened had been built over a park."

"She felt the need to put a spell on you just to get you to come tell me that?" Watanuki questioned.

"I tried to stop her," Doumeki told him. "She said she was going to take care of it, and then come home. She said something about wanting her memories back."

Watanuki huffed. "So she's going to go grant the customer's wish."

He thought for a moment he knew about that museum—it had an exhibit for the evolution of technology between the late twentieth century and the early twenty first century, and he had been thinking of taking Yuuko to it. Something bothered him, though, now that he thought about its location.

Had there been a park there? Had he ever been to that park?

Watanuki's eyes widened. Yes, he had been to that park, and he knew there was something very dangerous there—something that had made children disappear, long, long ago.


	23. Chapter 11 P3

Eleven-Part Three

Yuuko went into the museum just as they were closing it. The security guards didn't notice her walk right passed them through the doors, and didn't notice her as she walked through the otherwise deserted halls.

She could feel something—some kind of presence—and she followed it. It got stronger the further to the center she went. She came across a map of the building after a minute, and she saw that there was a courtyard in the middle. She took the most direct route to it.

Just as she stepped out of the building and onto the sidewalk, she heard a giggle, and she looked up—the boy was there, sitting on a rock that overlooked a koi pond.

"I found you," Yuuko said teasingly.

The boy laughed. "Not yet," he disagreed. "You haven't found me yet."

Yuuko raised her eyebrow. "But you're right there."

"Come and find me," the boy said, and then fell backward, behind the rock.

Yuuko trotted over to it, not sure whether or not she expected to see the boy there—he wasn't.

"Where did you go?" She asked loudly, looking around the courtyard.

Her question was answered with silence. She huffed, and looked down again at the spot the boy should have landed, only to find something suddenly there—an arm.

Yuuko just stared at it for a moment. It was a human arm, sticking straight up out of the grass, palm up. What was it doing there? How had it gotten there? Looking closer, Yuuko saw that there was a sinister kind of aura around it.

"Hey," she murmured, "what are you?"

The fingers just twitched toward her slightly. She hesitated for a moment, but reached out toward it.

"Yuuko!"

She heard the call just as her fingers came in contact with the hand, and her head snapped around. For a split second, she saw Watanuki and Doumeki standing in the doorway she had just come through. Doumeki looked unsure of what to do. Watanuki's eyes were wide with panic and fear.

Yuuko had a split second to take all this in, and then she was surrounded by darkness.

"Watanuki!" She called. "Watanuki, where are you?"

She heard a low chuckle, and she turned. The hand was clamped tightly around hers, only now the arm it was attached to was also attached to the body of…something. Some kind of demon, Yuuko supposed. It looked like a human girl, for the most part, no more than fourteen or fifteen, but its skin seemed almost like a liquid, like it might drip right off its bones—it all looked like that, except the arm that had been sticking out of the ground. It had a wide, depraved smile and mad eyes.

They weren't the only things in the darkness, either. There were several children behind the girl-like thing, one of whom was the boy who had come to the shop. There were at least three dozen of them, ranging in ages from five or six to fifteen or sixteen—this creature's victims, obviously. What was the point in taking all these children and dragging them into this dark place?

Yuuko looked at the creature again. "What are you?" She asked calmly.

"Another one," it said, rather than answer her. Its head twisted around to look at the children behind it. "Another friend has come to stay and play with us forever!"

The children flinched and shuttered. Some of the younger ones hid behind the older ones. Only the boy who had come to the shop watched the thing impassively.

"I'm not staying here," Yuuko said.

The thing's head snapped right back around, its smile even wider than before, almost splitting its face in half, and it squeezed her hand so tight Yuuko almost thought it was going to break it.

"You're staying!" It informed her with crazed glee. "You're staying forever and ever! We can play all we want here!" It looked at the children again, and they flinched again. "You all said you wanted your mothers, right?! She can be your mother now! Aren't you happy?!" Its head snapped back toward Yuuko. "You're staying!"

Yuuko just continued to look at it—to examine it as thoroughly as she could. What was this thing? Her nose twitched, and her brow furrowed. What was that smell coming from it? Decay? Was this a corpse?

Her expression smoothed out—she understood now.

"What game should we play first?" The creature asked with depraved excitement. "You can pick the game, since you're our new friend! Just pick the first thing that comes to mind, because we have plenty of time to play all the games, since you're staying with us forever!"

"No," Yuuko murmured, and held her free hand up in front of its face. "I have someone waiting for me, so I have to go back." The thing's smile instantly faded into a small frown, but its eyes only got wider as it started to disintegrate. "It's a terrible weight to take on, killing a person, even if you're already dead yourself. You need to go, now, and atone for your sins."

"I don't want to be alone!" It shrieked.

"I'm sorry," Yuuko murmured, and fought back the tears she could feel gathering in her eyes. "I'm sorry that there's nothing I can do to help you."

"No!" It cried, but its cry didn't last for long. It disintegrated entirely, and it was gone.

Yuuko looked at the children. From their clothes, she could tell that that thing had been collecting them for at least three hundred years.

"It's okay," she said to them, her voice soft and reassuring. "Come with me. I can lead you out of this border world."

The boy who had come to the shop smiled, and looked at his counterparts. "Let's go!"

"What if she just takes us to another scary place?" One of the girls asked—judging from her kimono and hairstyle, Yuuko guessed that she had been the first victim—stuck the longest in this dark world with that thing.

"Naw, we can trust her," the boy insisted cheerily, and grabbed her hand. "Come on, guys, let's get out of here!"

They were hesitant, but they did all eventually grab each other's hands, and the boy grabbed Yuuko's hand.

"Thanks for finding me," he grinned at her. "How do we get out of here?"

"Through a connection," Yuuko told him, and she reached her hand up. "All you have to do is follow the energy."

Just a thin trail of energy…and they were back in that museum courtyard. It was completely dark out, so Yuuko knew that at least three hours must have passed, though it hadn't felt like more than a few minutes.

Watanuki and Doumeki were still there. Doumeki appeared to have not moved a muscle, but Yuuko could tell that Watanuki had been crying on and off, and seemed to have been pacing around the entire time she was gone. He just stared at her for a moment, as if shocked by her sudden reappearance, but then grabbed her and pulled her into an extremely tight hug, as if he wanted to absorb her body whole.

"I was so scared," he whispered shakily, and she could hear the fresh tears in his voice.

Yuuko leaned her head against his. "I'm not going anywhere, Watanuki."

They might have stayed like that for hours, if not for the quiet noise of surprise that Doumeki made.

They both noticed, then, that they were engulfed in a bright light, and they looked the children that Yuuko had led out of the darkness.

The boy was still holding her hand, but the rest of them had started to glow. They were laughing, some of them were crying from happiness, as they rose up and started to float away, calling words of thanks to Yuuko as they went.

"I wonder why that thing took all those children," Yuuko murmured.

"She was just lonely," the boy said, and she and Watanuki looked down at him. "She used to live in an orphanage around here, but there was a really bad hurricane. There was a land slide, and she was the only one who got buried under it. She was able to claw her way almost to the top, but then she died just when she managed to get one arm out. She's still buried under here."

"How sad," Yuuko said quietly.

"It is," Watanuki agreed, "but that doesn't make what she did okay."

"I know," Yuuko mumbled. "I already exorcised her." She looked at the boy again. "Shouldn't you be moving on, too?"

"Naw," the boy laughed, "I'm going to stay here, and watch over this place. I was only able to get away thanks to this place being built—it distracted her. If not for that, I would never have been able to go to your shop." He pulled something out of his pocket, then—a rosary. He slipped it into Watanuki's pocket. "You can have that."

And with that, he disappeared.

"Does he mean he's going to be the guardian spirit of this place?" Yuuko questioned.

"I think so," Watanuki said. "If they were taken body and soul into a spirit world, then the line between their bodies and souls would have blurred. I'm sure that boy could become a guardian spirit if he wants to."

"It's too bad," Yuuko murmured. "If that boy had been able to grow up, he would have been a great priest or shaman."

"Indeed," Watanuki agreed as he pulled the rosary out of his pocked, though kept one arm firmly around Yuuko. "This has quite a bit of magic stored up in it."

"A family heirloom?" Doumeki guessed, looking at it over Watanuki's shoulder.

"Probably," Watanuki allowed.

"Can you use it?" Yuuko wondered.

"It's a suitable payment," Watanuki replied, and stuck it back in his pocket. "Come on, let's go home."

He turned and started walking back to the entrance, pulling Yuuko along with him.

"You coming?" She asked Doumeki, who hadn't moved, but he did follow at her bidding. "By the way, what time is it?"

"Almost midnight," Doumeki told her, and waited until they were outside of the museum entirely to add, "I'm just going to go back to the temple."

Watanuki nodded. "They probably already know something happened. Tell Kohane that everything's fine, and Yuuko and I will come over tomorrow."

Doumeki nodded. He went one way, and Watanuki and Yuuko went another. Neither of them spoke as they walked back to the shop. Neither of them spoke when they went into the shop. Neither of them said a word.

Yuuko took the lead, though, as they made their way to their room. The silence continued, but as soon as the door was closed, Watanuki had Yuuko in his arms again.

He kissed her hard and desperately. She reciprocated just as forcefully. She pushed him forward, kiss unbroken, until the pack of his legs hit the edge of the bed, and he fell backward. Yuuko pushed him further onto the mattress, and kissed him again as she crawled over him and took off his glasses.

Yuuko started to unbutton his shirt, and he sat up so he could take it the rest of the way off. Yuuko, still straddling him, took off her own shirt next, and the kissing continued. After a couple seconds, Yuuko pushed him down again, her fingers knotted in his hair, and she started to kick his pants off as he unzipped her skirt.

They were both completely naked in less than a minute, and Yuuko turned, pulling Watanuki with her, so the he was on top of her.

His lips were still desperate as he kissed her down her neck, her collar bone, her breasts, her stomach, and back up, nipping and nibbling as he went. He had been terrified all the while she was gone, out of his reach. How would he be able to go on if she disappeared again? Disappeared right before his eyes, and he was powerless to stop it…

But she had returned. She had come back, safe and unharmed, and he had her. He felt her arms wrapped around his torso, he felt her legs wrapped around his hips, he felt her nails dig into his back as he pushed himself inside her. He heard her voice as she cried out his name. He could taste her on his tongue. He could see the desire for him in her eyes. He could smell her scent when he buried his face in her hair as he pushed and pulled all the faster until she broke, and he could feel her convulse around him, and he broke, too.

She was still with him. He still had her.

Watanuki, panting, pulled out of her and pushed himself up on his elbows so that he could just look at her blushing, sated face.

Yuuko reached up and ran her fingers through his hair for a moment before murmuring, "I'm right here, Watanuki. I'm not going anywhere."

Watanuki turned to the side and pulled her close, his arms tight around her. "Please, don't do anything so reckless again."

Yuuko wrapped her arms around him, as well. "I love you, Watanuki. I'll never leave you alone."

"I love you, too, Yuuko," Watanuki murmured, and tightened his grip. "I can't let you get hurt—not again."

* * *

><p>AN:

Sorry it took so long to update part three—I've been so busy doing other things that I almost forgot about it.


	24. Chapter 12 P1

Twelve-Part One

A breeze made the leaves ruffle around the underdeveloped cherries. A few more days, and they would be ready to pick—the anticipation made Yuuko giggle to herself as she imagined all the delicious things Watanuki would make from them.

She was walking home from school. The fact that Watanuki hadn't been waiting for her at the gate meant that he was with a customer. Maybe she would be able to grant the customer's wish for him, and she would be that much closer to getting her memories back.

Only, when she turned the corner to the street the shop was on, she saw something strange—a girl, staring at it right outside the gate. She looked human enough, with long dark hair and pale skin. Her expression seemed bored, but Yuuko couldn't see her face very well through her hair, which appeared to have purposefully been cut to hide her face—she could have been fifteen, or could have been thirty, for all Yuuko knew so far.

The strange thing about this was that Yuuko had learned to expect the store to suck in humans who needed Watanuki's help. They could only see the store at all if they needed help, otherwise it looked like an empty lot, or so she had been told. Why would the girl be staring at an empty lot? She must have been able to see the store, but if she could see it, that meant she had a wish, and if she had a wish, the store should have pulled her in already.

"Hey," Yuuko chirped as she approached, and the girl's head turned a fraction of an inch in her direction. "What are you doing?"

The girl simply returned her head to its original position.

Yuuko tilted her head to the side. Now that she looked closer, there was something a bit off about the girl's aura—it was too thick. There was something else, too, but she couldn't put her finger on it.

"What are you looking at?" Yuuko asked, still with a friendly tone.

"There's a house in there," the girl murmured, and Yuuko was surprised at how quiet and raspy her voice was, like she hardly ever spoke. "At least, I think there is. I'm not sure."

Yuuko raised her eyebrow. "What do you mean?"

"Do you see anything?" The girl asked, indicating the shop.

"Yes," Yuuko answered. "That's where I live."

The girl sighed, almost as if she was relieved. "I see. I'm not sure why, but it almost looks like it's not really there. Maybe it's just because everything else around here is tall buildings and skyscrapers."

Yuuko's eyebrows pulled together—there was definitely something wrong with this girl. She didn't seem entirely lucid. Was she on drugs? She certainly didn't look like a junkie—her dress, shoes, hair, and skin were all very clean, almost immaculate.

"Are you alright?" Yuuko asked tentatively.

The girl just made a contemplative noise, as if she wasn't sure how to answer the question.

"Do you need help?" Yuuko probed.

The girl finally looked at her, then, and brushed her hair away from one side of her face. She looked a year or two younger than Yuuko. She must have just gotten out of school, then—where was her uniform?

She continued to just look at Yuuko blankly for a moment—her eyes were the clearest shade of blue, like she could see through anything with them—and then smiled. Without another word, she walked away.

Yuuko watched her until she turned the corner at the other end of the street, and continued to stare at the spot she disappeared for a couple seconds.

What a strange girl. Why hadn't the shop pulled her in? Was she not human? Yuuko was pretty sure she would have been able to tell if that girl was something other than human.

Then again, what was up with her aura? That was very strange, for such a normal girl…strange and normal…like Himawari?

Yuuko thought about that as she turned and walked into the boundaries of the shop. Himawari was normal and human in every way, except for the bad luck that haunted her. She wasn't even cursed or anything, or so Watanuki said—she had just been born like that. Maybe the girl was similar—maybe she had just been born with a spiritual abnormality.

"I'm home!" Yuuko called as she walked into the shop, and she was greeted by Maru's and Moro's giggles and hugs. "Were you guys good today?" She asked happily.

"Good, good!" Maru and Moro chimed.

Yuuko laughed fondly with them, and kept her hands on their heads as she walked with them through the shop to wherever Watanuki was.

He was in one of the rooms he spoke to customers in, and when she opened the door just a little bit to see who he was with, one of the two guests looked right at her.

Yuuko couldn't restrain a gasp of surprise, and that made Watanuki look at her, like he hadn't noticed her enter the shop at all.

"Yuuko," he smiled, "welcome home."

Yuuko smiled as well and walked into the room, and she sat down very close to him.

"These are acquaintances of mine," Watanuki told her, and she looked at the women, "and at the moment, they're customers."

The woman directly across from Watanuki was very beautiful—long dark hair, black eyes, plump lips, tall and curvy. Yuuko thought about when she met Raiden as a young child, and remembered that she had met this woman at the same time. Did Watanuki think this woman was a god, too?

Her eyes slid to the other woman, who was slightly smaller, with blond curls and ghostly pale skin. She didn't look any older than Yuuko, but that didn't mean she wasn't. She was still looking at Yuuko, too, unblinkingly. It wasn't like she was giving Yuuko a sharp look, but it was more like her eyes themselves were sharp—a sharp, deep, blood red, with sharp, cat-like pupils, and the tips of her sharp fangs were visible when her red lips parted. This woman was a vampire.

That made Yuuko nervous.

"This is Izanami," Watanuki continued, "and this is Oni-ō."

"Don't call me that," the vampire growled at him.

Yuuko shifted restlessly, and both Watanuki and Oni-ō noticed. Watanuki obviously wasn't sure what Yuuko was so nervous about, but Oni-ō smiled humorlessly.

"Relax, sweetie," she murmured, "I'm not that kind of vampire."

"What do you mean?" Watanuki asked, eyebrow raised.

Oni-ō gave him an exasperated look. "You're trying to take care of a young witch, and you don't even know how coveted her blood is?"

"How would he know something like that?" Izanami chided, and then looked at Watanuki as well. "Witch blood is like super food to vampires, that's all."

"Oh."

Yuuko's eyebrow twitched. Watanuki seemed surprised, but not worried, and that was odd. She expected him to go into that annoying over protective mode of his, having just learned that her blood was especially desired by vampires, and there was a vampire in the room, but he was totally at ease. Did he trust this vampire so much?

"Anyway," Izanami said, "as we were discussing before…"

"Right," Watanuki nodded, "the matter of the spirit world's imbalance."

"Imbalance?" Yuuko questioned.

"The spirit world has been distorting more and more over the past couple years," Izanami told her. "I, unfortunately, am not suitable to fix it."

Because she wasn't actually a god, obviously.

"But you can?" Yuuko asked Watanuki.

"No, I can't," he replied, and his expression turned serious. "The imbalance is the product of human ignorance. Humans keep on taking without giving back, and that's why things are distorting. No matter what I did, humans would continue to act as they have been, and things would become unbalanced again quickly enough."

"And I'm telling you humans are not the cause," Izanami said firmly. "There is something _purposefully_ distorting the spiritual plane _inside_ the spiritual plane itself."

"If there was something like that going on, the spirits would be frantic," Watanuki pointed out. "One of them would have come to me by now."

"Unless they didn't notice," Oni-ō muttered.

"There are things that can affect spiritual beings without their notice," Izanami agreed.

"Oh," Yuuko chirped, "my teachers told me about things like that—some people use them to subdue beings made of energy so they can use them for their purposes."

Watanuki gave her a hesitant look. In truth, he didn't doubt the possibility at all, but he didn't want to accept the job. If he did, he knew Yuuko would insist on taking care of it, and anything involving the women before him would most certainly lead to danger.

He felt he was between a rock and a hard place. The fact was, there was something messing with the spirit world, and that could put friends of his in danger. On the flip side, accepting the job would more than likely put Yuuko in danger. By that same token, Yuuko knew full well that he was capable of what Izanami was asking, and if he left the spirit world to its current fate, she would be furious with him, and probably try to do something about it herself, anyway. If he accepted Izanami's request, he would at least be able to keep Yuuko from doing anything rash.

"Alright," he agreed, and Izanami smiled in a satisfied way. "Do you know where I might find the source of this distortion?"

"No," Izanami shook her head, "but I can open a gateway into the spirit worlds, and you and your girlfriend can go in."

"She's not coming," Watanuki said flatly.

Yuuko made an indignant noise. "Yes I am."

"No," Watanuki refused. "The last time I took you with me for something like this, you nearly got your head removed by a necromancer."

They both looked around as Oni-ō made a contemplative noise. "Owl told me something about a necromancer surfacing a couple years ago."

"Owl?" Watanuki questioned.

"A druid," Oni-ō explained. "She takes it upon herself to keep other druids in line. She wasn't happy when she heard about this necromancer." She gave Watanuki a stern look. "You let her near one?"

"If I had known," Watanuki started defensively, but stopped when Izanami let out an impatient huff.

"That can wait until later," she said, and quickly lashed her hand out behind herself.

Watanuki and Yuuko both stared wide eyed at the result of her movement—a rip in the air itself had formed, distorting the space around it, and it appeared to lead to nothing.

"Go on, then," Izanami instructed quietly. "You have the power to fix it before it breaks. Go."

Yuuko got up without hesitation. Watanuki tried to grab her hand as he yelled her name, but she ran right at the wormhole. Watanuki quickly got up and followed her. The wormhole closed once they were both through.

Izanami sighed and leaned her head against the table.

"I could have just taken care of it, you know," Oni-ō commented as she continued to munch on the cake in front of her.

"This situation will take more than killing and setting things on fire," Izanami muttered, and Oni-ō gave her a sarcastic look. "I'm surprised you didn't run in after her, though. Aren't you worried?"

Oni-ō scoffed. "About that fiery little descendant of mine? She'll be fine."

…

Watanuki grabbed Yuuko's hand as the wormhole closed behind him.

"Yuuko, stop!" He half ordered, half pleaded.

She turned and gave him a questioning look. "Come on," she prompted, "let's go find what's causing the distortion."

"We can't just run into this blindly," Watanuki told her with an aggravated sigh. Had Yuuko always been so impulsive and haphazard? Maybe—only before, the impulsive haphazardness consisted of her shoving him into whatever wish had come her way.

Yuuko stepped closer to Watanuki, placed her hands on either side of her face, and kissed him lightly. He blushed slightly, and gave her the same embarrassed, disgruntled look he always gave her when she did such intimate things outside the privacy of the shop, but it seemed to calm him down some.

She smiled at him. "Everything will be fine."

Watanuki exhaled slowly, and ran his fingers through his hair. "Okay," he finally said, "cautiously…"

He kept a firm grip on Yuuko's hand as they walked through the dark nothingness. They passed through a few sections of the spirit realm, and the further they went, the more they could both feel the distortion. It was getting harder and harder for them to breathe.

And when they passed into a place they both recognized, they froze.

"This _is_ Reisan, isn't it?" Yuuko confirmed.

Watanuki nodded. "We have to find Zashiki-Warashi."

They picked up their pace, despite how hard it was getting for them to suck in air at all, let alone enough to stay conscious.

They managed, though. They all but fought against the distorting space until they reached the small river and the rock that stretched over it, where the zashiki-warashi in question often played her flute. She wasn't on the rock, or in sight, but her light sobs could be heard.

Watanuki led Yuuko over the river, and after passing through some trees, they found her…and the source of the distortion.

They found Zashiki-Warashi, in tears, surrounded by unconscious tengu, with the head of Ame-Warashi in her lap. It was obvious Zashiki-Warashi had been trying to get her to drink down several different kinds of medicines, but they weren't helping. Ame-Warashi was being consumed by something…and that something was distorting everything around her.

Zashiki-Warashi looked up as they came into view, her face contorted with worry, frustration, fear, exhaustion, and a myriad of other things, but when she saw Watanuki, it was all replaced by relief.

"You're here," she murmured, and her eyes glazed over. "Help her…"

She fell to the side, unconscious.


	25. Chapter 12 P2

Twelve-Part Two

Both Watanuki and Yuuko just stared, wide eyed, at the scene before them, but then they both moved.

Watanuki hurried to the side of Zashiki-Warashi to make sure she was alright—and she was…for a zashiki-warashi who had been exposed to such negative energy for an extended period of time. She was exhausted and overwhelmed and was showing all the symptoms of having been exposed to sleep gas, but she would be fine.

Yuuko went to Ame-Warashi.

The first thing she had to do was figure out what was causing this. Whatever it was, it seemed to be made from the essence of corruption itself. When Yuuko tried to reach toward Ame-Warashi's chest, when her fingers got to close, she felt them burn slightly.

"Yuuko," Watanuki half snapped, "step back, let me take care of it."

"No," Yuuko refused, and kept going, "I'm fine."

"You'll get hurt," Watanuki argued, and placed a hand on her shoulder to pull her back, but she still refused.

"You would get hurt worse," Yuuko pointed out. "You can't turn your own energy into armor—just let me…"

But she didn't finish her sentence. She just kept reaching.

The distorting corruption was resistant—repellant, even, to her hand. It took all Yuuko's natural strength just to reach Ame-Warashi's chest, and it felt like her hand was on fire.

Still, she continued to reach, right into Ame-Warashi's distorted chest cavity. She could feel something inside. It was moving. Was it Ame-Warashi's heart? No, that wasn't it.

It cut Yuuko's finger…and then slivered inside her.

Yuuko pulled her hand away immediately and fell back into Watanuki, her jaw clenched against the pain shooting up from her hand, through her arm, and into her chest.

"Yuuko?!" Watanuki panicked.

"Don't yell," she hissed through her teeth, "I'm right next to you, I can hear you."

"What happened?" Watanuki demanded more quietly.

Rather than answer, Yuuko just looked at Ame-Warashi—good, the distortion was gone. Whatever had bitten her and crawled into her, it had been causing the problem. Yuuko could feel it settle in her chest, she could feel it trying to corrupt her already, but she was stronger than an ame-warashi. She could contain it.

Well, she could try to. She was in a _lot_ of pain.

The karasu tengu started to wake up almost immediately. They groaned and pressed their little hands against their heads, but the second they saw Watanuki—who was entirely ignoring them in favor of checking Yuuko's hand—they jumped up and started yelling.

"You!" The leader tengu shouted accusatorily. "What are you—" He cut off when he noticed the still unconscious Zashiki-Warashi. "What did you do?!"

"I didn't do anything," Watanuki snapped back. "What happened? How did Ame-Warashi get like that?"

The tengu all glanced around at each other, and the leader bit his lip begrudgingly.

"We don't know," he admitted. "We all just started feeling sleepy and numb. By the time we figured out it was because of something in Ame-Warashi, we were too weak to do anything." He placed a remorseful hand on Zashiki-Warashi's head.

"It's okay now," Yuuko said, though her voice was strained. "I've got it under control."

"It is not okay," Watanuki disagreed. "Whatever it was, it's done something to you!"

"It's inside me," Yuuko told him, and pressed her hand against the center of her chest. "I think it's some kind of demon."

"Demon?" Watanuki repeated.

"We need to get it out of here," Yuuko half panted, but to her surprise, the pain was fading away.

Ame-Warashi started to stir, then, and they all looked at her. She blinked a couple times, and then propped herself up on her elbow as she pressed her other hand against her forehead.

"Ugh," she muttered, "what…"

She noticed Zashiki-Warashi, who was showing no signs of waking up any time soon, then she looked at the tengu, who were looking at her with a mixture of worry and apprehension, then at Yuuko and Watanuki, who were looking at her with concern—exhausted concern on Yuuko's part, panicked concern on Watanuki's.

"What happened?" She asked, uncharacteristically quiet.

"I'd like to know that, too," Watanuki replied. "I was hired by Izanami to get rid of whatever was distorting the spirit world. Whatever it was, it was inside you, and now it's inside Yuuko. What is it and how did it get inside you?"

"How should I know?" Ame-Warashi demanded, and looked very much like she would like to hit him upside the head with her nearby parasol, but thought better of it.

"When did you start to feel strange?" Watanuki asked. "I can't imagine you didn't notice anything."

Ame-Warashi scoffed. "I haven't felt right since you found me in that river two years ago."

Watanuki bit his lip, thinking. It must have gotten inside her then—the timing sounded about right, it was after that that the spirit world had begun to distort. He looked down at Yuuko, whose breathing was becoming less labored. How was he supposed to get it out of her before she got into the state Ame-Warashi had been in?

Ame-Warashi and the tengu all twitched and their eyes widened in a shocked way. Watanuki turned, only to find the same kind of rip in space that he and Yuuko had come to the spirit world through. Izanami was aware that the job had been completed, and was giving them a way home.

Watanuki looked at Zashiki-Warashi. "Will she be alright, after being exposed to all that corruption?"

"We'll take care of her," the leader tengu growled. "Go."

Watanuki wanted to stay, at least until he was sure they would all be okay, but he had to get Yuuko back to the shop. He picked her up and walked through the wormhole, back into the same room he had left Izanami and Oni-ō in. He wasn't sure, but he thought he heard Ame-Warashi mutter, "Thank you," under her breath.

The rip closed as soon as Watanuki stepped out of it, and Oni-ō stood, her piercing eyes wide.

"What happened?" She asked quietly.

"Whatever was causing the distortion," Watanuki replied, "it's inside Yuuko now."

Oni-ō growled furiously, but Izanami stood as well and held up her hand to silence her. She approached Watanuki, and looked at Yuuko calmly.

"A demon?" She questioned.

Yuuko looked at her, almost drunkenly. "Parasite," she mumbled.

"Stay here," Watanuki instructed Izanami and Oni-ō, and he headed toward the door. "I'll be right back."

As soon as he stepped out of the room, Maru and Moro came around the corner, perhaps thinking he was done with the customers and ready to play, but they froze when they saw him carrying a nearly unconscious Yuuko.

"Mistress!" They cried, and hurried to Watanuki's sides.

"She'll be okay," Watanuki assured them. "Open the door to the storeroom."

Maru and Moro complied instantly. Once Watanuki was inside, he laid Yuuko down on the floor, and started to search through the shelves fervently—he searched until he found a small black box, the contents of which were several small, clear crystal balls. He took one out and put the box back.

Maru and Moro were leaning over Yuuko, who was just blinking slowly at the ceiling, but they got out of Watanuki's way as he approached. He slipped his hand under Yuuko's head and rested it on his lap. He held the crystal over her slightly parted lips as he started murmuring indistinct word spells.

Nothing happened at first, but after a couple seconds, something like a black mist started to waft out of Yuuko's mouth. Her eyes opened wide, her back arched, her entire body tensed, but she made no other movement. She didn't struggle, even when she felt something move up into her throat, blocking her ability to breathe.

It would be over soon…surely…Watanuki knew what he was doing. He would never hurt her…she could stand some discomfort.

It was hard, though—whatever he was pulling out of her, it did not want to come out. She could almost feel it clawing at the walks of her throat in an effort to stay in. The parasitic demon was desperate.

But it was not match for Watanuki. Before a full minute passed, his word spells had done their job. The demon was pulled from Yuuko and into the crystal orb waiting in Watanuki's hand.

It had no real form. It was just a bit of concentrated corruption, just a sludgy piece of thick energy.

She took in a deep, ragged breath once the airway was clear, and her body relaxed. She just breathed for a couple seconds, too, before opening her eyes again, and meeting Watanuki's.

"Going to lecture me again?" She asked, a little teasingly.

Watanuki didn't say anything. He just continued to look down at her, his expression a mixture of worry and guilt and a few other things Yuuko wasn't in the mood to analyze.

She was exhausted, but she managed to heave herself up and wrap her arms around Watanuki's neck. She kissed him, soft and deep, and he wrapped his arms around her to keep her up.

When she pulled away, she smiled at him. "I love you, too—I _need_ you, too. It's no good if something happens to you, and _I_ don't know how to fix _you_. So don't cry…"

But she passed out before she could finish her sentence.

Watanuki continued to hold her for a moment, but then stood up with her, and walked out of the storeroom, Maru and Moro close behind. He left Yuuko in their room with them to tend to her, and went back to Izanami and Oni-ō.

Both women looked at him when he reentered the room.

"Here," he offered Izanami the crystal, and she took it. "It somehow managed to get itself inside an ame-warashi without her noticing."

"Sneaky little bastards," Izanami muttered, twirling the crystal around her fingers. "No wonder the spirit world was going to hell, with something so corrupt worming its way into it."

"And the girl?" Oni-ō asked.

"She will be fine," Watanuki replied. "You seem oddly concerned about her." The few times he had met the vampire, she hadn't seemed to care about much of anything.

Oni-ō shrugged and looked away. "I was once young, with blood desired by more than just vampires. I wouldn't want her to end up like me." She pursed her lips. "And given what I've heard of her past life, I wouldn't want her to end up like that again, either."

Izanami giggled at Oni-ō in an indulgent way, and then looked at Watanuki again. "Your payment will arrive in a couple days."

Watanuki nodded, but didn't say anything.

Izanami's look turned hesitant, but then she sighed. "I know I've said this before, Shopkeeper, but I'll say it again—that body may be identical to that of the woman you knew as Yuuko Ichihara, the soul within it may be that of the woman you knew as Yuuko Ichihara, but she _is not_ the woman you knew as Yuuko Ichihara. Remember that."

"Thank you for the advice," Watanuki replied, almost in monotone.

Izanami pursed her lips slightly, but grabbed Oni-ō's hand, opened another wormhole, and they were gone.

Watanuki sighed. He pulled his pipe from the sleeve of his kimono, walked out onto the deck as he packed some tobacco into it, and inhaled deeply as he lit it.

Izanami had given him a similar speech the first time he met her, and had given it again every time they saw each other thereafter. He was already aware that "Yuuko" now was not the same as "Yuuko" then. Would she be "Yuuko" from back then once he granted her wish? Would their relationship now change once she had her memories back?

These were things he thought of on his own. He didn't need Izanami pointing them out to him. He worried about it enough as it was…and he supposed he would continue to worry, until her wish was granted.


	26. Chapter 13

Thirteen

Watanuki watched from the deck out back, smoking his pipe and sipping tea, as he watched Yuuko, Maru, and Moro jump up and try to grab the ripe red cherries from the tree. It was entertaining, to say the least, and a part of him secretly felt like a husband watching his wife play with their children, which was why he was mildly annoyed when he felt someone step into the boundaries of the shop.

He sighed as he got up and went back inside—and to his surprise, he recognized the voice calling him by name.

"Watanuki, where are you?" She demanded impatiently.

Watanuki walked around the dividing wall to where she was standing by the door. "Jesse," he greeted, "it's been a while."

"Indeed," Jesse huffed, and flicked her long brown hair over her shoulder as she approached him. "Where is Yuuko?"

"Picking cherries with Maru and Moro," Watanuki told her.

"That must be an entertaining sight," Jesse guessed, and then held out what looked like a large bottle wrapped in cloth.

Watanuki took it and unwrapped it, and indeed it was a bottle—a long, clear one containing a slightly clouded liquid. He could sense Izanami's essence on it.

"I was asked to deliver that to you," Jesse said, "since I was planning to visit, anyway."

"And what is this, exactly?" Watanuki asked—he could sense that whatever it was, it was extremely powerful and valuable, but he didn't know what it was for or how to use it.

"It's known as 'Tears of God,'" Jesse answered. "Ingesting a mere teaspoon of it will heal most any ailment, purify most poisons and venoms, and it will help wounds heal three times faster than normal."

Watanuki nodded—how very useful indeed. Trust a god to know the perfect price for their own wish.

"Thank you," he said with a smile. "I was just having some tea—would you like to join me?"

"I would rather drink this." Jesse held up a second bottle Watanuki hadn't noticed—this one was _sake_, and very strong _sake_ at that.

"Drinking in the middle of the day, just like Yuuko," Watanuki sighed.

"Oh," Jesse perked up, "has she finally started drinking?"

"I meant Yuuko before," Watanuki qualified. "I'd rather she not turn into an alcoholic in this life, too."

Jesse huffed at him, and started making her way to the backyard. He followed, feeling very strongly that he was not going to enjoy this visit of hers.

Yuuko looked up as Jesse came into view. For the first half second, they looked very pleased to see each other. For the next half second, Jesse seemed to notice some change in Yuuko's appearance, and Yuuko gave her a questioning look.

Watanuki cringed at the cat-like smile Jesse directed at him. "Really? _You_, of all people, succumbing to such a base desire?"

"It took forever, too," Yuuko chimed in as she, Maru, and Moro joined them on the deck. She wrapped her arms around one of Watanuki's and nuzzled her forehead against his jaw, making him blush slightly. "That's okay, though—it was worth the wait."

Watanuki's blush darkened, and he seemed to not be able to decide if he was pleased or embarrassed.

"Want some _sake_ now?" Jesse asked teasingly, holding the bottle up and waving it slightly.

"I'll get cups," Watanuki muttered, and went back into the shop.

"Uptight as ever, I see," Jesse commented.

"Yeah," Yuuko agreed. "Eiko told me that you're the one who showed Watanuki where to find me."

"Should I not have?" Jesse asked, and placed a warm hand on her head.

Yuuko shook her head against Jesse's hand. "I'm glad you did."

"You love him?" Jesse questioned.

Yuuko's smile widened, and she nodded.

"And he's going to unlock the memories of your last life," Jesse added.

"He is," Yuuko confirmed, "but honestly, as much as the back of my mind is nagging me to remember, if I had to choose between my memories and Watanuki, I would choose Watanuki."

Jesse kissed her forehead. "I know you would." Her maternal smile faded, though. "Have you told him your real name yet?"

Yuuko shook her head. "Even if I did, I prefer 'Yuuko,' and I've gotten used to being called that. It's just like how I could call him Kimihiro if I wanted to, but I'm used to calling him Watanuki, and he used to being called that by me."

Jesse sighed indulgently. "What would your great grandmother say if she saw you now?"

"She'd say 'hi' and then start teasing Watanuki," Yuuko theorized, and they both laughed.

Watanuki came out, then, with three _sake_ cups, figuring that if he didn't bring one for Yuuko, she would either steal _sake_ from his cup, or drink it directly from the bottle anyway. Both women all but pounced on him, playfully laughing at his indignation, and then Maru and Moro joined in, and he was pinned to the floor within thirty seconds.

Over the next ten minutes, he attempted to ignore more playful teasing from Yuuko and Jesse while they drank the _sake_. Maru and Moro decided to go take a nap. By her fifth cup, Yuuko was bordering on drunk, and refused to get off Watanuki's lap, keeping her arms draped firmly around his neck.

Watanuki might have tried harder to get Yuuko off—such intimacy was inappropriate in front of a guest—but she was stealing kisses and planting them on his neck whenever Jesse knocked back another shot of _sake_, and the effects that that was having on his body were becoming visible. He needed to let Yuuko remain where she was to hide that.

"So was there something you wanted to talk to me about?" Watanuki asked, more to distract himself than anything. "You said you were going to visit anyway, didn't you?"

Jesse made a contemplative noise. "The necromancer," she murmured. Just mentioning the word was enough to sober both Watanuki and Yuuko up. "He was killing and trying to use merpeople to connect to the God of Water when you found him, yes? Well, he was spotted in the Capitol as well, only this time he was using water nymphs."

"And?" Watanuki prompted.

"He escaped," Jesse told them, "but not before we managed to get one thing out of him." She gave them a serious look. "Does the word 'Hakai' mean anything to either of you?"

Watanuki felt Yuuko's arms tighten around his neck just ever so slightly, and he placed an arm around her as well.

"We had a run in with a shaman by that name," Watanuki said.

Jesse snorted delicately and knocked back another cup of _sake_. "Hakai. Destruction." She looked at Watanuki again. "Do you remember the little _shikigami_ you met two years ago?"

Watanuki looked at her questioningly for a moment, but then something stirred in his memory—a little white haired boy with blue eyes who guarded Jesse's stolen jade earrings. _My master's name is to destroy._ That was what the little _shikigami_ had said.

Jesse tucked her dark hair behind her ear, and Watanuki saw one of the earrings there, hanging from the lobe.

"I retrieved them right after the necromancer escaped," Jesse continued. "I can't be sure that the one who stole them was this 'Hakai' person, but just in case, I felt it was high time I took back what's mine."

Watanuki huffed. "There's no telling what damage could be done with the energy stored in those beads."

"Indeed," Yuuko agreed. "With my destructive energy imbued in them, a nasty little shaman could easily use these beads to level an entire city."

"Do you have any idea where the necromancer might have gone?" Watanuki asked.

Jesse shook her head. "We're trying to find him and this 'Hakai' person, but they've managed to avoid us thus far. We don't know what they're up to, why they're trying to contact the God of Water, but we'll keep looking." She glanced at Yuuko. "I suppose it's a good thing she's not a virgin anymore—virgin witches are very valuable ingredients for blood magic."

Watanuki huffed and blushed again as Yuuko giggled quietly.

"All the same," Jesse went on, "you should both be careful. If these men have seen you, then you may be targeted."

Watanuki tightened his arm around Yuuko. "Thanks for the information," he said. "How shall I compensate you for it?"

Jesse rolled her eyes. "Warning a friend of danger is not something one has to be compensated for."

"You know how this store works," Watanuki reminded her.

Jesse shook her head in exasperation. "Idiocy," she muttered, and then stood. "If you must insist on this ridiculousness, then make me something delicious with those cherries. I have to leave now, but I'll be back tomorrow."

"We'll be waiting," Watanuki replied.

Jesse smiled again and waved shortly as she walked back into the shop. Watanuki felt it when she left the barrier—Yuuko did as well. She shifted so her legs were bent on either side of his hips and pushed him down.

"Hey, Yuuko," Watanuki tried to protest, but he was cut off by a very aggressive kiss. He was tipsy enough himself to let his hands wonder up her thighs, under her dress, up her body, until he pulled the cloth off entirely, leaving her in nothing but her underwear.

Yuuko giggled and sat back on his hips with a playful smile as she flicked his glasses off. She could feel him hardening under her, and she started to pull his kimono apart.

"Yuuko," Watanuki murmured, already a little breathless, "we should go inside."

"Why?" Yuuko countered. She untied his sash and kissed him again before he could make any more objections.

Watanuki's hands found their way to Yuuko's back—he unhooked her strapless bra and pulled it away, leaving their chests bare against each other. He grabbed her wrists and took her with him as he rolled until he was above her, his untied kimono curtaining her from anyone else's view, and she just continued to smile at him as he breathed unevenly.

After a second of this, of him openly marveling at her beauty, he sank down and planted light kisses on her lips, then moved down her neck, to her breasts, and she inhaled sharply and arched her back when he started to nibble and suckle her nipples. He let go of her wrists and slid his hands over her arms, down her sides, to her remaining underwear. He pulled them down as far as he could without taking his mouth away from her breasts, and she kicked them the rest of the way off while his fingers returned to the area between her legs and he started to swirl them around her clitoris.

He was touching her a bit more roughly than usual, and it made her thighs quiver as she bent her legs up. She gripped his shoulders and rolled until he was on his back again, but she didn't pause to marvel at him. She slid back, leaving a glistening trail of arousal along his lower stomach, and positioned herself so he could slip right inside her as she slowly sank all the way down.

Yuuko moved slowly at first, forward and back, up and down, but she moved faster as he continued to work her clitoris over with his thumb. She could feel herself building up fast, and she tried to hold it off, but when she was finally pushed over the edge, she came to a panting, quivering halt, crying out loudly, her nails digging into the skin of his abdomen. She felt dizzy from the intensity of the orgasm, and she wondered if it was the alcohol making it seem more powerful than usual.

Watanuki, also panting, could feel her clamp down and convulse around him, and he propped himself up on his elbows. She whimpered at his movement, making him smile slightly. He grabbed her waist and pushed her down without pulling out of her, and he kept his grip on her waist as leverage for his deep thrusts. It was gratifying, the way she panted his name as he went. It wasn't long before she came again, and this time, he followed right after, emptying himself inside her with one last thrust.

He leaned forward as he came down from the high and rested his forehead against her collarbone. She wrapped her arms around his head, laced her fingers through his hair.

They stayed like that for a minute, just breathing, and then Yuuko humorously scoffed, "Go inside…"

Watanuki huffed against her skin and propped himself up on his elbows to look down at her properly, and with annoyance. "If this wasn't a separated space, the people in the buildings next to us would have seen us."

"They'd have been given a good show," Yuuko grinned.

Blush was added to Watanuki's annoyed expression, and it made Yuuko giggle.

Yuuko, giggling, happy, satisfied, tangled with him…the annoyance of her teasing faded away, only to leave a calm, content smile on Watanuki's face. This was how things should be—and he would be damned if he was going to let any necromancer or shaman ruin it.

* * *

><p>AN: Sorry it took so long to update—I've been working on other projects and preparing for art school, so it might take me a little while to update again, too. Just thought I'd warn everyone just in case, but I promise I will be diligent.


	27. Chapter 14 P1

Fourteen-Part One

Yuuko watched silently as Watanuki placed different kinds of foods into a bento box. He didn't seem to really be seeing either the box or the food, but was so practiced with it that he didn't need to pay attention.

He placed the last cut of sushi inside, and then put the lid on it.

"Is that everything?" Yuuko asked.

"Yes," Watanuki answered.

He wrapped the box up, and he and Yuuko walked out of the shop together in silence.

The silence continued all the way to Doumeki's temple, too. They walked up the steps, and were immediately greeted by Doumeki and Shizuka.

Shizuka and Watanuki looked at each other for a moment, and then Shizuka said, "If she sees you with that kind of face, she'll just worry."

"I know," Watanuki agreed.

"Where is she?" Yuuko asked.

"In her usual room," Doumeki answered, and took the bento box from Watanuki. "Come on."

Watanuki and Shizuka waited until they were inside the temple to look at each other again.

"How long?" Shizuka asked.

"What difference would it make if I told you?" Watanuki asked back. "It wouldn't change anything, except to incur a price."

Shizuka looked at the temple. "She says she has a wish for you."

"I figured," Watanuki replied, and started walking toward the temple. "Yuuko and I will be imposing on you for three days."

Shizuka closed his eyes and took a deep breath. "I see…"

…

Yuuko followed Doumeki silently, and forced a smile on her face as he opened the door.

Inside it were Sakura and Syaoran, sitting next to each other at the foot of a futon, Kohane, sitting next to the head of the futon, and Himawari, lying in the futon.

She smiled at Yuuko, but she didn't look good. Her skin was pale, despite the sunshine from the window she was lying next to, and she had deep, dark circles under her eyes. She didn't even have the strength to sit up anymore.

"Good morning," she greeted, her voice quiet.

"Good morning," Yuuko replied calmly as she walked into the room, and sat down next to Himawari as well.

"Where's Watanuki?" Himawari asked.

"He stayed outside to talk to Grandpa Shizuka," Yuuko answered.

Himawari laughed weakly. "They're probably having fun with their comedy act."

"They are pretty funny, aren't they?" Yuuko agreed.

The door slid open again, and Watanuki and Shizuka walked in. Watanuki had a soft expression on his face, but it looked pained to Yuuko—not that she was surprised. If one of her best friends was dying, she wasn't sure what she would do.

"Come on," Shizuka muttered.

Doumeki helped Kohane stand. Sakura and Syaoran got up as well, though Sakura placed a comforting kiss on Watanuki's forehead before leaving. They closed the door behind themselves, and Watanuki, Yuuko, and Himawari were alone.

Watanuki sat down next to Yuuko, and Himawari chuckled lightly.

"I'm glad I could live long enough to see you out of the shop again," she murmured.

"I'm glad, too," Watanuki agreed softly.

Himawari looked at Tanpopo for a few seconds while she stroked him, her fingers a bit stiff, and then looked up at Watanuki, her eyes not quite in focus.

"I have a wish," she said.

"I know," Watanuki replied. "What is it?"

"I need you to find someone," Himawari requested. "I don't know where she is, or even if she's still alive, but…"

"Who?" Watanuki asked.

"My great great granddaughter," Himawari answered. "I don't think you ever met her."

"Not that I remember," Watanuki agreed.

Himawari chuckled again, a bit wryly, and looked at the ceiling. "My son, my grandson, my great granddaughter, they were all perfectly normal…and maybe that's why they all died before me."

"Himawari," Watanuki tried to say, but she shook her head.

"None of them inherited my bad luck," she continued, "but my great great granddaughter did." She looked at Watanuki. "I haven't had contact with her for a couple months now, but if she's still alive, I think she must be somewhere nearby. She was never one to explore or go out of her way to try new things."

"So she would stay in a familiar place," Yuuko surmised.

Himawari nodded. "There's a picture of her in my phone."

Yuuko reached across the futon to grab it. She scrolled through the pictures quickly, and stopped on one that made her eyebrow twitch.

"Is this her?" She asked, showing Himawari the screen.

"Yes," Himawari nodded. "Her name is Mari."

Yuuko looked at the screen again.

Her hair was shorter in the picture and out of her face, but she was sure she had seen this girl in front of the shop not too long ago. Yuuko remembered thinking that the girl might be like Himawari—normal, but strange—because her aura was oddly thick.

"She has the same problem as you?" Yuuko asked.

"She…how do I put it," Himawari mused. "She died once."

"Died?" Watanuki questioned. "Why didn't you ever tell me?"

"I didn't want you to worry," Himawari said. "It happened when she was barely a toddler. I went with her and her mother to a park, and I thoughtlessly helped her put her coat on. That coat got caught on a tree branch when her mother and I weren't looking. She pulled so hard to get it off that she fell back into the pond, and it got stuck on something down there, too. She drowned." She took a deep, raspy breath. "They were able to resuscitate her, but she was dead for about five minutes."

"Long enough to cross into the spirit world, but short enough that she was still connected to her body," Watanuki murmured.

Himawari nodded. "She woke up, and she was able to see the bad luck around me, and it had somehow spread to her. She was able to see other things, too, that she shouldn't have been able to see." She took another deep breath. "The more she grew, the more she closed herself off. I couldn't tell her why bad things happened to the people she got close to—the only ones it seemed to not affect were myself and her mother." She chuckled lightly. "Well, and Doumeki and Kenichi."

"What about her father?" Yuko asked.

Watanuki thought for a moment. "Your great granddaughter's husband died not long after they got married, if I remember correctly."

Himawari nodded stiffly. "My great granddaughter remarried a year ago, and Mari came to live with me then. She didn't want her bad luck to affect her stepfather…but distance wasn't enough." She smiled sadly. "He was a good man. He came to try to talk Mari into moving back in with him and her mother, but she wasn't there. He ate one of the cookies she had recently made, and he choked on it."

"And she blamed herself," Watanuki guessed.

Himawari nodded again. "My great granddaughter…she fell into such a deep depression that she killed herself."

Yuuko gasped, and Watanuki balled his hands into fists.

"When?" He asked.

"A couple months ago," Himawari answered. "Mari disappeared right afterward."

"Why didn't you say anything?" Watanuki questioned. "I could have been there for you."

"There's nothing you could have done," Himawari replied, and smiled at him, "but there is now. Will you find her?"

Watanuki forced a smile in return. "Of course I will."

"I'll go," Yuuko decided, and stood. "I'll be back soon." And with that, she ran out the door.

Watanuki watched her go, hesitant, but sighed.

"You should go with her, if you're worried," Himawari prompted.

Watanuki shook his head. "I'll know if something happens to her."

Himawari giggled lightly. "Hey, Watanuki, would you mind doing something, after you and Yuuko find her?"

"Such as?" Watanuki questioned.

"You saved me, once," Himawari murmured. "You stayed with me, even knowing about my bad luck. Do you think you could do the same for my great great granddaughter?"

Watanuki smiled softly at her. He held out his little finger and wrapped it around hers as much as it would bend, making her eyes widen slightly in surprise. "It's a promise."

Himawari laughed shakily. "Even after all these years, Watanuki, you're still a fool. Such a kind fool…and I need to ask one more thing of you…"

* * *

><p>Author's Note:<p>

To my followers, I am sorry I haven't updated for a while. My schedule has been a bit unstable, but I should have more time to work on this story now. Thank you for your patience.


	28. Chapter 14 P2

Fourteen-Part Two

Yuuko ran back to the shop, looking for any traces of the girl's energy that might still be there, but she found none. This didn't faze her—she simply took out a handkerchief and started folding it, mimicking a trick Watanuki had shown her recently for the purpose of finding people.

The handkerchief turned into a butterfly and rose out of her hand.

She ran along after it. It took a couple turns before she was joined by someone, and she smiled.

"Shouldn't you be protecting that museum, Mr. Guardian Spirit?" Yuuko asked cheerily.

The boy she had saved from the border world not too long ago smiled back. "I am—there's this girl who keeps coming in, and there's something not right about her."

"Not right?" Yuuko questioned, still chasing the handkerchief butterfly.

"There's something bad in her," the boy told her. "I don't think she means it, but there's just a lot of bad in her. She keeps looking at the koi pond like she wants to drown herself in it."

Yuuko continued to look at him for a moment, then at the butterfly, then at the museum, which the butterfly seemed to be leading her toward—and it did. It continued to flutter along, unnoticed by those they passed, and only lost its shape when they reached the very courtyard Yuuko had found that hand in.

It was an unpleasant feeling, remembering that girl she had had to send to Hell, but the girl standing in the courtyard now was more important. The little guardian spirit was right—she was looking at the pond like she wanted to drown herself in it.

Yuuko approached her slowly, and joined her by the pond.

She made no indication that she had noticed Yuuko other than to murmur, "This place used to be a park."

"I know," Yuuko replied.

"This pond used to be so much bigger," the girl continued. "Or maybe I was just smaller…"

"Small enough to drown in it?" Yuuko prompted, and the girl finally looked at her. "You're Mari, right? Grandma Himawari's great great granddaughter?"

She nodded, and tucked her hair behind her ear. "How do you know Grandma Himawari?"

"It's a long story," Yuuko replied, "but she asked me and my boyfriend to come find you—she's worried."

"Boyfriend?" Mari questioned, and looked at the young guardian spirit, who was watching them impassively from the large rock.

"Not him," Yuuko said humorously.

She reached out to touch Mari's shoulder, but Mari flinched away, almost like she was scared.

"You shouldn't touch me," she murmured. "Bad things will happen to you."

Yuuko actually laughed and proceeded to pounce on her. Mari squeaked, shocked, and tried to struggle away, but Yuuko was bigger and stronger. She gave up struggling after a couple minutes, and Yuuko continued to firmly cling to her.

"Do you want to die?" Mari asked.

"Do you?" Yuuko countered pleasantly.

Mari gave her a slight glare, and looked away, at the pond.

"I shouldn't be alive," she muttered.

Yuuko made a contemplative noise, also looking at the water. "Grandma Himawari told us that you drowned in a pond at a park when you were little."

"I should have just stayed dead that time," Mari hissed.

"Because if you had, your stepfather wouldn't have died?" Yuuko confirmed, and Mari glared at her tearfully.

"And my mother wouldn't have killed herself," she hissed.

"You know, Mari," Yuuko said, "if you had stayed dead, Grandma Himawari would have been sad. Your mother, too, probably, but I never met her, so I don't know."

"She would have been fine," Mari dismissed. "She would have found a nice man, and she would have had another child, and she would have been fine."

"That's not fair," Yuuko informed her. "No mother should suffer the loss of her child."

"She'd have been better off if I'd stayed dead!" Mari snapped, and the tears finally overflowed from her eyes. "You can see it, can't you? This bad stuff that won't leave me alone?"

Yuuko could see it. It wasn't quite the same as what surrounded Himawari, and Yuuko supposed that was why she didn't recognize it right away, but it was there, and she could see it.

"It'll make bad things happen to you, too," Mari muttered. "Bad things always happen to anyone who touches me."

"Not everyone," Yuuko disagreed. "Not your mother, or Grandma Himawari."

Mari scoffed with wry humor. "How can you say that? My mother killed herself because I killed her husband, and Grandma Himawari's heart couldn't take it, either. Her health's been getting worse and worse since my mother died."

"If you know that, then why aren't you by her side?" Yuuko asked. "She's worried about you—maybe she would get better if she knew you were okay."

"Or I'd just make her even worse," Mari countered. "Who are you, anyway?"

"Yuuko," she smiled. "My boyfriend's name is Watanuki."

Mari thought for a moment. "I think I remember Grandma Himawari talking about friends of hers by those names…but I figured they'd be around her age."

"Well, Watanuki is," Yuuko allowed, "but I'm seventeen."

Mari gave her a very disturbed look. "You're dating a hundred and thirty something year old man?"

"He doesn't look that old," Yuuko informed her, and Mari's look just turned disbelieving. "Come on," she continued, and pulled Mari up to her feet. "Let's go to Doumeki's temple, and you can see for yourself."

Mari shook her head and pulled her hand away. "I'll just make it dirty."

Yuuko made an annoyed noise. She grabbed Mari's wrist firmly and started to pull her toward the exit.

"Hey," Mari protested, "didn't you hear me?! I'll just make things worse! And if you keep touching me, you'll get hurt! I'm not kidding!"

Yuuko huffed. "Grandma Himawari said that you can see things you shouldn't be able to see—so even if you shouldn't be able to, you can see that I'm not a normal human, can't you?" She looked back at Mari. "This pathetic excuse of a demon that's done a half-assed job of possessing you can't hurt me."

"Demon?" Mari repeated.

"Mm," Yuuko nodded. "Some of it transferred from Grandma Himawari to you."

Mari's brow furrowed. "But Grandma Himawari said that she was just born like that…"

Yuuko rolled her eyes. "Watanuki told me that a priest told Himawari something like that when she was little. That priest either didn't know what he was talking about or just didn't have enough power to see it for what it really was."

"Why would a demon possess Grandma Himawari?" Mari countered. "She's so nice, I can't…"

"It's probably something leftover from her passed lives," Yuuko replied. "Some curse that follows her from one life to the next. You died, and some of it transferred to you. That's all."

"That's all the more reason I shouldn't be alive," Mari mumbled.

"Stop being so angsty," Yuuko requested. "You're coming with me, and that's that."

"I can't," Mari insisted. "I have to meet with someone soon."

"Who?" Yuuko asked, but didn't stop pulling.

"A man," Mari answered. "He says he can help me."

"What's his name?" Yuuko probed, still pulling.

Mari hesitated, but then said, "I forgot to ask…"

"You're coming with me," Yuuko said flatly.

"He says he can get rid of the bad stuff," Mari argued. "He had power, I could see it!"

"And what does he want in return?" Yuuko questioned.

"He didn't ask for anything," Mari replied.

Yuuko sighed and finally stopped, just short of the exit. "When and where were you supposed to meet him?"

Mari pulled a cellphone out of her pocket at looked at it. "In about five minutes, in that courtyard."

Yuuko turned, and started leading Mari back toward the courtyard. "Fine, just to see who this guy is, but if I don't like his aura, we're leaving."

The fact was, Yuuko already didn't trust this guy—anyone who claimed to be able to get rid of Mari's residual curse without asking for anything in return couldn't be up to anything good. She wasn't sure what he wanted, but she would find out, and if he really was up to no good, she would simply have to stop him.

There was someone there when they returned to the courtyard, too—a man who was very tall, with snow white hair, and when he turned toward them, Yuuko saw icy blue eyes boring into her own.


	29. Chapter 14 P3

Fourteen-Part Three

Yuuko just continued to stare at the man, and the man continued to just stare at her until she breathed one word.

"Hakai…"

Hakai glanced between Yuuko and Mari, sadistic amusement in his eyes, but he kept it off his face. "This is unexpected," he murmured.

"I didn't expect anyone else to be here, either," Mari murmured. "She's a friend of my great great grandmother's, but—"

"He's met me before," Yuuko cut her off, all humor gone from her tone, "and he's not here to help you. Go to Doumeki's temple—tell Watanuki that Hakai is here."

"But," Mari tried to protest, but fell silent at the stern look Yuuko gave her.

"Go," Yuuko said.

Mari glanced at Hakai, who was paying her no attention, and left. She wasn't sure what was going on, but she knew that whatever it was, Doumeki would be able to sort it out.

The little guardian spirit appeared again, and gripped Yuuko's hand lightly.

"That one's bad, too," he murmured, "but he _does_ mean to be."

"I know," Yuuko replied quietly. "You should hide somewhere."

The little guardian spirit shook his head against Yuuko's arm. "This is my place to guard—I won't hide."

Yuuko smiled down at him, but then looked back up at Hakai, expressionless.

"What did you want from her, shaman?" She asked once she could no longer hear Mari's footsteps. "The curse within her? Did you want that bad luck?"

"Wouldn't it make her life easier if she didn't have it?" Hakai countered. "She was desperate to get rid of it."

Yuuko snorted delicately. "You expect me to believe you just wanted to help her?"

"Why not?" Hakai questioned. "Or are you mad that I was a little forceful the last time we met?"

"You'd have killed a normal human doing what you did to me," Yuuko pointed out, "whatever it was that you did. As far as I know, shaman can't slice a witch's skin with their energy alone."

"We all have our little secrets," Hakai replied cryptically. He was being perfectly cordial, but the sadistic look never left his eye. "A young witch with long black hair and eyes almost more red than brown. I was told you were a virgin—shame you aren't still."

"Why?" Yuuko questioned. "So you can have your necromancer friend use me for blood magic?"

"Ah, yes," Hakai mused, "you met the necromancer once—you, with that boy who runs the wish-granting shop."

"Why was he trying to call upon the Water God?" Yuuko asked.

"Secrets, little girl," Hakai chided, and the sadistic look in his eyes intensified.

"No true gods have been seen for decades," Yuuko said, "not even in the Capitol. They're not here anymore."

"Not yet," Hakai allowed.

Yuuko huffed. "The Water God would kill you and that necromancer for killing his children."

Hakai chuckled evilly, as if to disagree. "I came for a curse, but I think I'll take you instead, as you did chase my prey away, and took my scroll the last time we met."

Yuuko gave him an evil smile of her own. "It's a foolish thing, shaman, to pick a fight with a witch like me."

…

Doumeki was the first to see Mari as she ran through the temple gates, panting and frantic.

"Mari," he said loudly, and half jogged across the yard to meet her. She wrapped her arms around him tightly, and he placed one hand on her head and one on her shoulder. "What happened? Where…" He looked around for Yuuko, but couldn't see her.

"That Watanuki guy," Mari said shakily, "is he here?"

Doumeki nodded, and led Mari to Himawari's room, where Watanuki and Shizuka were both sitting with her.

Himawari smiled at first, but it was quite obvious that something was wrong.

"Where's Yuuko?" Watanuki asked, standing, before anyone else could say a word.

"She…" Mari took a deep breath. "She told me to come here and tell Watanuki that Hakai is at that new museum."

Watanuki's eyes widened in shock and fear.

"Hakai?" Doumeki repeated.

"This guy I met the other day," Mari elaborated. "He told me he could make all this…all this bad stuff in me go away, but when that Yuuko girl saw him, she got really stiff and told me to come here."

"Mari," Himawari breathed, trying to sit up.

"Stay still," Shizuka instructed quietly, and then looked at Mari. "Come here."

Mari obeyed, and knelt down next to them.

Himawari grabbed Mari's hand and then looked up at Watanuki. "Go—she might need your help."

Watanuki looked down at her and murmured, "I'll be back," before running out of the room. Doumeki went with him.

Mari made to follow them, but Shizuka gripped her shoulder to keep her down. "Stay," he said sternly.

Himawari tugged on Mari's hand, and Mari leaned down, over Himawari, to rest her head on her chest in a makeshift hug. Himawari wrapped her arms around her, and stroked her hair, knowing it was useless to tell the girl that whatever was going on, it wasn't her fault.

…

Watanuki and Doumeki ran to the museum in about ten minutes, both ready for a fight…only to find Yuuko sitting on the unconscious body of a very big man, chatting happily with the little guardian spirit.

Watanuki and Doumeki both just stood in the doorway that led back into the building, staring, and Yuuko gave them a wide smile when she noticed them. She stood, trotted over to Watanuki, and wrapped her arms around his neck.

"I found Mari," she told him, very pleased with herself.

"Er, yes, you granted Himawari's wish," Watanuki replied, knowing that was what she wanted. "Yuuko, what happened?"

"I knocked that Hakai guy out cold," Yuuko told him.

"I can see that," Watanuki muttered, getting irritated, "but how?"

"I just hit him with a lot of energy," Yuuko said simply.

"You're not hurt?" Watanuki questioned. "That _is_ the same guy who hurt you when you went to get Taizu, right?"

"He caught me off guard that time," Yuuko dismissed.

"What do we do with him?" Doumeki questioned.

"Get him out of here," the little guardian spirit requested. "He's oozing corruption."

"I can see that," Watanuki muttered, and pulled a slip of paper out of his pocket, keeping one arm firmly around Yuuko's waist.

He held it to his lips, murmured something Yuuko couldn't understand, and when he lightly blew on the paper, it disintegrated.

"Who did you just send a message to?" Yuuko asked.

"Izanami," Watanuki answered, and a minute later, a wormhole appeared next to them.

Izanami came out, a serious expression on her face and her pink robes flowing elegantly around her, and she was followed by another woman—this one blond haired and blue eyed and shorter than Yuuko. She was dressed like a warrior, and had a pair of spiked maces ready in her small hands. Oni-ō followed after, looking agitated.

"Where is he?" The small woman asked. "Where's the bastard that's been helping to kill my children?"

"Suijin," Watanuki greeted, almost nervously.

Yuuko simply pointed at Hakai's still unconscious body. Suijin stomped over to him, Izanami followed gracefully, but Oni-ō stayed where she was, only glaring at the shaman in an annoyed way.

"Honestly," she muttered, "after all the trouble we went to to bring peace to our world, a pair of dumbasses has to come along to mess everything up again." She looked at the mortals next to her. "Are you all alright?"

Watanuki nodded. "Yuuko already had him down by the time we arrived," he said, indicating Doumeki.

Oni-ō smiled at Yuuko and patted her head approvingly. "Very good."

Yuuko gave her a questioning look. "Were my teachers exaggerating when they told me a vampire would do anything to get my blood?"

"No," Oni-ō replied, "they were very right—be sure to defend yourself properly should you ever meet one."

Yuuko raised her eyebrow, but looked around when she heard Suijin angrily yell, "Wake up you bastard!"

She had turned him over onto his back and was now stomping on his chest. Izanami nudged his head with her foot. He didn't wake up.

"We might as well take him back with us," Izanami decided. "Perhaps we can use him as bait for the necromancer."

"Owl's still looking for him," Oni-ō interjected, and went to join them. "We should run that by her—see if she can help."

"Alright," Izanami agreed.

"I'd rather just bash his bloody head in now," Suijin grumbled.

"After we get the necromancer," Izanami promised.

Suijin huffed, but hopped off him, and Oni-ō picked him up. He was significantly larger than her, so she had to balance him on one hand, her arm fully extended upward. His arms, legs, and head dangled limply before and behind her.

"Should have brought your husband along," Suijin muttered to Izanami.

"Oh well," Izanami dismissed, and opened another wormhole.

Oni-ō went in immediately with nothing more than a parting smile to Watanuki and Yuuko, and Suijin followed her. Izanami hesitated, looking at Watanuki.

"You will receive payment for this soon," she murmured. "Should you find the necromancer, please contact me immediately."

"Of course," Watanuki agreed.

Izanami gave him a polite nod, and the wormhole closed after she walked through it. They were all silent for a moment, until Doumeki spoke.

"What just happened?" He asked, somehow unable to sound either curious or disbelieving with his flat voice.

"They just took that shaman somewhere they can keep him from continuing his plans," Watanuki replied, "whatever they are…"


	30. Chapter 14 P4

Fourteen-Part Four

Yuuko stared blankly from inside the room, looking at Doumeki and Mari, who were sitting outside, Doumeki cradling Mari in his lap.

"He used to hold her like that when she was a small child," Kohane had told Watanuki and Yuuko without needing them to ask.

Himawari had fallen asleep before the three of them had returned, and Mari was sitting dejectedly on the outside hall, looking at the now cherry-less trees. Doumeki had sat down next to her without a word, pulled her onto his lap, and they had been like that for more than an hour.

Mari didn't seem to understand that she had nearly helped an insane shaman to further his goals, whatever they were. Yuuko supposed it didn't really matter whether or not she understood so long as she didn't let herself get into that kind of situation again.

The door slid open, and Watanuki and Yuuko looked at it—it was Sakura, and she was looking at Watanuki.

"Himawari's awake," she informed him, "and she's asking for you."

Watanuki nodded and stood. He walked out of the room, and Sakura joined Yuuko at the low table.

"What's going to happen to her?" Yuuko asked, indicating Mari.

Sakura made a contemplative noise. "She'll stay here, I suppose. She's only sixteen, and she won't have anywhere else to go."

"Where does she go to school?" Yuuko probed.

"She doesn't," Kohane murmured, and Yuuko and Sakura looked at her as she joined them, as well. "She interacts with people as little as possible, so she's been schooled online since the first grade."

"She didn't like kindergarten?" Yuuko questioned.

"She didn't like knowing that anyone who touched her would get hurt," Kohane amended. "I remember, when I was still a child, that it was also hard for Himawari, but her parents wouldn't let her take online classes. They could only tell her that those bad things that happened weren't her fault, and tried to raise her as a normal child."

"Hn," Yuuko mused, looking at the back of Mari's head.

…

Shizuka was still in the room with Himawari when Watanuki walked in, and she smiled at him.

"I hope Yuuko didn't get hurt," she murmured.

Watanuki shook his head as he sat down next to her. "She's fine."

"That's good," Himawari said, and looked at Tanpopo, who was perched on her stomach. "And the other thing I asked…?"

Watanuki lowered his eyes. "Are you sure, Himawari?"

Himawari nodded.

Watanuki's jaw clenched, and he took a deep breath. "I'll go get the _bento_ I made earlier."

"There'd better be inari sushi in it," Shizuka called after him.

"I didn't make it for you!" Watanuki snapped at him.

Himawari and Shizuka watched him walk back out of the room, chuckling lightly, and then looked at each other.

"It'll kill him," Shizuka murmured, "doing what you're asking him to do."

"I know," Himawari replied with a sad smile, "but it's the only thing I can do for Mari, and he has Yuuko again—she can be there for him."

Shizuka sighed.

"Hey, Doumeki," Himawari said quietly, "when do you think it was that we started looking at Watanuki like a grandchild?"

"Don't know," Shizuka shrugged stiffly. "Maybe when we got too old to walk to the shop."

…

That day slowly turned into the next, and that one into the one after. Yuuko made a point to be very touchy-feely with Mari, especially in front of Himawari, so that they would both know she wouldn't be without it. Yuuko was too powerful to be affected by either Himawari's or Mari's bad luck, and she felt they needed to be assured of that.

And it was on the third day, while Yuuko and Mari were in the room with Himawari, folding origami cranes and butterflies, that Watanuki walked in with a resigned expression. He didn't say a word, but they all knew what it meant.

Watanuki pulled a large crystal orb out of his kimono sleeve and placed it on Himawari's chest.

"Mari," he murmured, "place your hand on the orb."

Mari hesitated, her eyes on Himawari's passive face, but did as instructed. Yuuko wasn't sure exactly what Watanuki was doing, but she watched—she really, really watched…and in doing so, she saw that their bad luck was being drawn into the orb. Watanuki was taking the curse-demon and sealing it away.

But why? Did Himawari wish for that?

It seemed to be straining for both her and Mari. They started to breathe heavily, panting even, but Watanuki kept Mari's hand firmly in place with his own, and kept the orb balanced on Himawari's chest.

Mari looked ready to pass out by the time it was over, and the once clear orb was solid black.

Himawari, breathing heavily, could only manage to utter the words, "Love you," before the light left her eyes entirely.

"Grandma?" Mari questioned breathlessly, eyes wide.

Yuuko looked at the door, where the others were standing, Sakura holding Kohane up, Syaoran standing next to Shizuka, but Doumeki walked in right away. He pulled Mari up and away from Himawari, and Yuuko watched in confusion as Himawari's soul gathered above her body.

It should have gone straight to the other side, but it lingered…and then shifted toward Watanuki's hand, in which Tanpopo was sitting. Himawari's soul surrounded Tanpopo, and it looked to Yuuko like the small bird was absorbing it.

Yuuko didn't need to ask to understand. Himawari had asked Watanuki to take not only her bad luck, but Mari's bad luck as well, and the price for that was her soul. Watanuki would now likely take Tanpopo to the storeroom, where he would hibernate until someone came along who needed him—a companion with all of Watanuki's kindness, with Himawari's warm soul, who couldn't be affected by any type of negative energy.

Yuuko looked at Mari. She wasn't crying, but her hand was shaking as it gripped Doumeki's forearm. Shizuka walked into the room and sat down next to Watanuki, eyes downcast. Sakura and Syaoran took Kohane back to her room to rest. Yuuko, Doumeki, and Mari left the room as well, and closed the door behind them.

Watanuki pulled the quilt up to cover Himawari's face, Tanpopo secure in his hand, orb in his lap, and a tear trickling down his cheek.

"It's a good thing Yuuko came back when she did," Shizuka muttered. "She wouldn't be able to rest in peace, thinking you'd be alone."

"Mm," Watanuki agreed shakily. "She's always worried about others."

"She's always worried about _you_, idiot," Shizuka corrected.

"You're the idiot," Watanuki retorted, still quiet and shaky. "She must have worried about you way more."

Shizuka sighed and placed his hand on Watanuki's head in a grandfatherly manner. "Idiot."


	31. Chapter 15

Fifteen

Watanuki plucked absently at the strings of the _shamisen_, sitting on the edge of the back deck, staring blankly at the grass. He was so lost in his own head that he didn't even notice Yuuko, Maru, and Moro sneaking up on him, and cried out in surprise when they pounced on him.

"What the hell?!" He demanded as they wrestled him to his back, all three of them laughing.

"You're brooding," Yuuko informed him.

"Brooding!" Maru and Moro repeated gleefully.

"Grandma Himawari won't be able to rest in peace if she finds out about this," Yuuko added.

"She's resting just fine," Watanuki grumbled, "in the storeroom, in Tanpopo."

It had been nearly a month since Himawari's death, and Watanuki was showing no signs of moving passed it. As soon as he and Yuuko had returned to the shop, he had placed the already comatose Tanpopo into a fine box made of wood from a peach three, lined with silk cushioning, and there he would stay in the storeroom until it was time to wake him up.

Yuuko knew that it wasn't really Himawari's death that was making him so depressed, it was the fact that her soul had not moved on to where it should have—and whether it had been her own wish or not, Watanuki hated himself for it.

Yuuko huffed at him and cupped her face in her hands, elbows planted on Watanuki's chest. "Eiko told me that after living at least a hundred years, one starts to forget the difference between life and death."

Watanuki huffed as well, and would have tried to get up, but Maru and Moro were clinging to his arms, still laughing.

"What she meant," he said, "was that one becomes accustomed to those around them dying. Given how long humans live now thanks to medical advancements, I haven't been around long enough to become accustomed to it."

Yuuko sighed and nuzzled her head under his chin. "You're not alone, you know."

Watanuki looked down at the top of her head. "I know."

They laid there in silence for a few seconds, but got up when they sensed someone come into the shop. Maru and Moro shot up first, running excitedly toward the front door, and Watanuki and Yuuko followed. They came around the dividing wall as Doumeki and Mari finished removing their shoes, which was a bit difficult with Maru and Moro clinging to them.

"Good evening," Watanuki greeted, mostly to Mari.

"Good evening," Mari replied with a slight smile.

"We weren't expecting you guys today," Yuuko commented as she swooped down on Mari, who ignored her for the most part.

"Grandma Kohane told us to," Doumeki said.

"Is something wrong?" Watanuki asked—he usually knew when something important was going to happen.

"No," Doumeki replied. He pulled a square of stiff paper out of his breast pocket and handed it to Watanuki. "She said we should give that to you in person."

Watanuki read the writing on the card, his expression turning more and more disbelieving with every word.

Yuuko let go of Mari and looked at the card over Watanuki's shoulder.

_We invite you to the union of Kenichi Doumeki and Mari Harano._

She didn't bother to read further. She just looked at Doumeki and Mari and squealed excitedly. "You're getting married?!"

Mari nodded.

Watanuki gave Doumeki a demanding look.

"Figured we might as well," Doumeki shrugged. "Grandma said something about how we should while she and Grandpa are still around to see it."

"She's sixteen!" Watanuki reminded him.

"I don't want to be lectured about age gaps by you," Doumeki said flatly, which made Yuuko laugh.

"Besides, girls can get married at sixteen," Mari pointed out.

"You should at least finish school first," Watanuki insisted.

"I already have," Mari told him. "I did school online, and finished early."

"What about college?" Watanuki argued.

"Unnecessary," Mari dismissed. "It's not like I don't already have a career."

"You do?" Yuuko asked, having heard nothing about that.

"She's a mangaka," Doumeki told them.

"Really?" Yuuko questioned, and pulled Mari away, off to her small collection of manga to see if any of them were drawn or authored by her. Maru and Moro followed.

Watanuki continued to look at Doumeki with a mixture of disbelief and incredulousness. "I know you never really dated girls in high school or college, but…"

"She's already living at the temple," Doumeki said. "She said it was weird, though, for a girl to be living with people she's not related to."

"So, what, she was intending to get a place of her own?" Watanuki surmised.

Doumeki nodded. "Grandma convinced her it would be a better idea to just marry into our family. Apparently that was what Grandma Himawari wanted, too."

"And that doesn't bother you?" Watanuki questioned disbelievingly.

"Not really," Doumeki replied.

Watanuki sighed. "You are just like your great grandfather."

"Sorry for being like Grandpa Shizuka," Doumeki replied in monotone. "Has there been any word on that guy?"

Watanuki hesitated, but motioned for Doumeki to follow him, figuring he might as well make some tea.

"The shaman is still in Izanami's custody," he said, "but the necromancer is still out there somewhere."

"That shaman," Doumeki said slowly, "he wanted whatever was inside of Mari, didn't he?" Watanuki nodded. "But now that it's gone, she'll be safe?"

Watanuki hesitated again. "Answering that question would incur a price."

Doumeki lowered his eyes. "I'll be on guard, then."

…

As it turned out, many of Yuuko's manga had been written and some even drawn by Mari under a few different pennames.

"I thought it was weird that so many authors would be able to describe supernatural things so accurately," Yuuko commented, "but it makes sense if they were all you."

"Mm," Mari replied. "I figured I might as well make use of the things I see."

"Can you still see them?" Yuuko asked.

Mari nodded. "Grandma Kohane said that it wasn't the curse or whatever that let me see those things, it was because I died as a child."

"I guess that makes sense," Yuuko nodded.

"Grandma Kohane also told me that she knew you in your life before this one," Mari hedged.

Yuuko nodded again. "That's what they've told me."

"You don't remember?" Mari asked.

"No," Yuuko answered, "but I will soon—Watanuki can make that happen."

"Why do you want to remember?" Mari probed.

Yuuko thought for a moment. "I guess I feel like there's something important that I need to know, but I need my memories back to know it."

"Mm," was Mari's response.

"Do you remember what it was like?" Yuuko asked. "Being dead, I mean."

Mari blinked at her a couple times before saying, "It's my earliest memory, actually."

Yuuko glanced at one of the manga on the shelf. "Like in that one?" She indicated it. "A warm, peaceful place, like the feeling of being asleep while aware of it?"

"That was my experience," Mari confirmed. "I don't know about Hell or any place like that, though."

Yuuko made a contemplative noise. "I wonder if I'll remember what it was like to be dead."

"How did you die?" Mari asked curiously.

"I don't know," Yuuko shrugged. "No one will tell me."

"I hope it wasn't too horrible," Mari muttered.

"Me too," Yuuko agreed cheerfully. "So how come you and Doumeki are getting married?"

"Grandma Himawari wanted me to," Mari shrugged, "and so does Grandma Kohane."

"That's it?" Yuuko questioned disbelievingly.

A light blush covered Mari's cheeks. "It's not like either of us were ever really interested in things like dating—I couldn't even touch people without hurting them until recently. Also, it may just be something I imagined as a child, but he and I decided a long time ago that we would get married someday."

"A childhood promise?" Yuuko laughed. "That's so sweet!"

Mari shrugged again.

"Most people say, 'Because we love each other,' or something like that, you know," Yuuko pointed out.

"We do love each other," Mari replied, as if this was a simple fact.

Yuuko laughed lightly, but couldn't help but think that that they suited each other—they were both blunt, blank faced, serious people.

"Oh, you know what you should do?" Yuuko said as a thought occurred to her. "You should enroll in my school—then you and Doumeki can have a secret student-teacher relationship!"

Mari looked at her like she was crazy, and then walked out of the room.

Yuuko followed her, still laughing at her thought, and joined Watanuki and Doumeki in the kitchen. They enjoyed tea for a little while, talking mostly about wedding plans, before they were interrupted—this time by Watanuki sensing that someone had simply appeared in the front room.

"What's that?" Mari asked, also sensing the disturbance.

"Izanami," Watanuki answered, and as he stood, Izanami came into the room.

"There you are," she said, and then noticed Doumeki and Mari. "Oh, you have company."

"She's a god, apparently," Doumeki explained at Mari's questioning look.

"Did you find the necromancer?" Yuuko asked.

Izanami shook her head. "I just came to give you this," she said, and handed a small leather sack to Watanuki, "and to warn you to be careful. We don't yet know what the necromancer is after, or what he wants Suijin for, but we have managed to get the shaman to tell us that whatever is going to happen, it will happen soon." She looked at Yuuko. "Witches should be careful," she looked at Doumeki, "as well as priests," she looked at Mari, "and those who have died once already."

"Anyone with power, you mean?" Watanuki surmised.

"The less experience and exposure to the world one has, the more valuable an ingredient they are," Izanami replied.

Watanuki glanced involuntarily at Yuuko. "We'll keep that in mind."

"You especially be careful," Izanami advised, giving him a very serious look. "Unique things are also very valuable."

Watanuki rolled his eyes as Izanami walked back out of the room.

"What did she mean by 'unique things'?" Doumeki asked.

"She was probably referring to the fact that he's not human," Mari theorized. Both he and Watanuki gave her questioning looks. "Well you're not, are you?" She questioned Watanuki.

Watanuki didn't reply—the fact was, he himself didn't really know anymore.

He didn't really say much more, and stayed at the table while Yuuko saw Doumeki and Mari to the door. He cleaned up on auto pilot, vaguely aware that Maru and Moro said they were going to go to sleep.

Yuuko watched him until he was done, and then looped her arms around his waist from behind.

"It doesn't matter, you know," she murmured. "Whatever you are, you're still Watanuki."

Watanuki turned around and wrapped his arms around her, too. "Izanami's right—all sorts of things are after me. They have been for as long as I can remember. Demons, spirits, practitioners of blood magic…that necromancer may well come after me, as well."

Yuuko adjusted her arms so they were around his neck and kissed him. "The same could be said for me."

"We know what you are, though," Watanuki replied. "Not knowing what I am…it could put you in danger."

"Who do you think you're talking to?" Yuuko challenged, and pushed him up against the counter. "I'm no pushover, Watanuki."

Watanuki let out a little sigh and pressed his forehead against hers. "If I lost you…I can't even think of what I would do if I lost you." If he lost her again…

"You're not," Yuuko insisted. "Don't worry about things like that—I'm got going anywhere."

Watanuki gave her a smile that didn't touch his eyes. _You wouldn't say that if you knew what it was like, watching you be taken by sheer void._ He wanted to say it to her, but he couldn't. He said nothing, and with his continued silence, she kissed him.

He kissed back, and at some point, they ended up in their room, on their bed, with Yuuko under him. She had most of his clothes off before they reached the bed, and he pulled her dress off before her back hit the mattress. He pulled her underwear away, as well, but left her silky stalkings in place—the way they felt against his skin as she wrapped her legs around his waist turned him on even more than he already was.

Yuuko usually would have let him take his time with foreplay, but she was feeling impatient, and she let him know that by pressing her heel against his tailbone.

Watanuki huffed with mild amusement—if she wanted it like that, he would give it to her. He cupped the underside of one of her knees, pushed the leg out of his way, and thrust into her. She moaned quietly at first, but her voice quickly escalated in volume as Watanuki went at her harder and faster. This was considered rough for him, especially compared to how gentle he usually was.

It wasn't long before they reached the climax of their lovemaking, and then they just looked at each other, panting, knowing what the other wanted to say.

_I don't need you to protect me and I'm not going to let anything happen to me._

_I'd rather die than lose you again._

* * *

><p>Author's Note:<p>

I'm fine with the Doumeki/Kohane pair, but I was always kind of a Doumeki/Himawari shipper, and I guess this is kind of the manifestation of that—which is why it's been so long since I updated. I felt like I was straying from the main plot, but I didn't want to completely let go of the side pairing, so I decided to just go with it, not that it'll really become part of the story.


	32. Chapter 16 P1

Sixteen-Part One

It was hot and muggy out. With the summer heat and the near-constant rain, Yuuko could be seen playing in the backyard with Maru and Moro every day, in their swimsuits.

Fish could also be seen.

Watanuki's eyes alternated between Yuuko and her very revealing bikini to the goldfish floating about the air. He hadn't seen them for a while, but whenever he did…

Yep, there she was.

Yuuko looked up when Watanuki sighed, and stared with curiosity at what had caught his attention—a nekomusume, who had leaped up onto the fence to catch one of the goldfish. She swallowed it whole, and mewled contently before opening her cat-like eyes, which focused on Watanuki.

She smiled at him—he wasn't sure if it was meant to be mischievous or if it just looked like that because she was a cat—and leaped at him.

"Don't suddenly jump on people!" Watanuki reprimanded, but was ignored.

"You're being talked about again!" Nekomusume informed him cheerily, and then looked at Yuuko, who was coming to see the cat-girl up close, Maru and Moro close behind her. "Ah, you really are back!"

She pounced on Yuuko, then, but didn't manage to push her to the ground. Her arms just locked around Yuuko's bare waist, and Yuuko proceeded to scratch and caress her as if she were a real cat.

"Ex-girlfriend?" She asked Watanuki without a hint of jealously.

"Hardly," Watanuki grumbled. "Hey, Nekomusume, what do you mean when you say I'm being talked about again?" The last time Nekomusume had told him that, it was because his right eye was in the hands of Joro-Gumo, and shortly after came to be inside her.

Nekomusume continued to ignore Watanuki in favor of Yuuko's pets, but as Yuuko also wanted to know what she meant, she lead her over to the deck, and sat down next to Watanuki. Nekomusume purred contently, nuzzling Yuuko's lap. Maru and Moro proceeded to climb up onto Watanuki's lap and shoulders.

"What were you talking about?" Watanuki asked pointedly.

"The whispers," Nekomusume replied, still nuzzling. "Everyone's talking about how the witch is back at the shop, but the kid is still running it. They're talking about how the witch's body is still pretty pure, and how the kid is keeping her all to himself."

"All to himself!" Maru and Moro repeated gleefully.

Yuuko laughed lightly as Watanuki placed a possessive arm around her shoulder. "Were you supposed to share me?" She asked teasingly.

"No," Watanuki replied. "They just want your body, and all the power in it."

"And yours, too," Nekomusume reminded him. "Everyone's starting to get kind of scared, you know. Your power keeps growing and growing, and now there are rumors that the old necromancer is after you."

"'Old' necromancer?" Watanuki and Yuuko both repeated.

"Just some witch who doesn't want to accept the fact that he can't make the dead live again," Nekomusume replied, and gave Yuuko a mischievous smile. "It was you, wasn't it? Who stuck him in a prison?"

Yuuko made a contemplative noise. "I wonder if I did something like that in my last life."

"Yep," Nekomusume confirmed, and purred against Yuuko's hands. "I remember my grandmother talking about it—that the witch sealed another witch in some kind of prison because he wouldn't stop his attempts at necromancy."

"Your grandmother?" Watanuki questioned.

"It was hundreds of years ago," Nekomusume replied. "I wonder how that necromancer got free—I would certainly love to know!"

Watanuki and Yuuko glanced at each other.

"If it was hundreds of years ago, then it can't have been my life before this one," Yuuko mused.

"No," Watanuki disagreed quietly, "it would have been—because you were here, in the shop, for a long time."

Yuuko looked at him, and then turned her head to look through the open door at the shop's interior.

"I'll go make some snacks," Watanuki decided, "as payment for the information."

He walked into the shop, Maru and Moro swinging on his arms as he went, and Yuuko continued to absently pet Nekomusume.

She had been there for a long time? For hundreds of years? That didn't seem odd to her, for some reason—had Watanuki said something like that before? Or had one of her teachers? She couldn't remember, but she felt aware of the fact that she had been here for a long time—much longer than her natural life span should have been.

How had she come to live for so long? What method had been used to prolong her life? Had she chosen to be like that?

What would she remember when Watanuki restored the memories of that life to her?

For the first time since she had made the wish, she felt a bit scared of what might be lurking in those memories.

…

Yuuko stared blankly out the window, completely ignoring Doumeki's lecture on the Meiji Era. She was too preoccupied with thoughts of what the nekomusume had said—that she had sealed away that necromancer.

If she sealed him away once, she could do it again, if only she could remember how. The method was somewhere in the memories of her passed life, and although the thought of hundreds of years' worth of memories was a bit disconcerting, she would endure it. She wanted those memories, and she wanted to stop that wannabe necromancer.

Maybe she could convince Watanuki to restore part of her memories?

She sighed—even if she could convince him, how would he know when she had dealt with the necromancer in the past? He wouldn't have been alive at the time.

The bell rang, then, and Yuuko slumped down on her desk. Why Watanuki was still making her attend school was beyond her. Eiko wasn't that bad, and regardless, how would she even find out? It wasn't like she checked up on them on a regular basis.

She thought of just going home early, and started eating her lunch while still looking out the window, entertaining herself by thinking of all the ways she might convince Watanuki to let her drop out. She found herself half wishing he was more of a lustful man—he would be so much easier to manipulate that way.

Yuuko saw something in the reflection of the window, then, and looked at the door as it opened. It was just a little, but it was clearly Mari.

Doumeki also noticed. He stood and walked out of the classroom without a word.

Some of the girls in the class noticed as well, and proceeded to bunch up around the door to listen.

Yuuko stood as well, and walked over to them. "What are you doing?"

"Go away," one of the girls hissed.

"Ugh," another growled, "they're talking too quietly, I can't hear them!"

"Maybe we'd be able to if you would shut up!" Another whispered sharply.

"He probably forgot something at home," Yuuko theorized, not bothering to keep her voice down, "and she probably came to bring it to him."

Every one of the girls looked at her.

"Do you know who that is?" One of them asked.

"Wait," another murmured, "you know Mr. Doumeki outside of school, don't you?"

"Yeah, I do," Yuuko confirmed.

"Who is she?!" More than one of them questioned.

"His fiancée," Yuuko told them simply.

Half of them looked devastated, while the other half looked enraged.

The door opened again, then, and they all turned back around to see Doumeki, who was looking at them with his usual lack of expression.

"What are you doing?" He asked them.

"Are you really engaged to that girl out there?" One of them asked back.

"Yeah," Doumeki answered, "why?"

The devastated ones looked very much like the life had been sucked out of them, and they just went back to their seats, dragging their feet. The enraged ones plastered pleasant smiles on their faces.

"Why didn't you say anything?" One of them inquired. "That's so cold—you should tell your students."

"Mm," was Doumeki's reply.

Another of the girls pulled the door open all the way to reveal Mari, who was still standing there, looking disinterested.

Yuuko knew from pictures that Mari looked a lot like Himawari had as a teenager, so it was perhaps a good thing that she didn't wear makeup or do anything special to her hair—the egos of the girls scrutinizing her now probably wouldn't have been able to take it if she was any prettier.

This, in Yuuko's mind, was another good reason to drop out—high school girls were by far the most irritating beings on the planet.

"This is your fiancée?" One of the girls asked.

"Mm," Doumeki replied, and they took that as confirmation.

"You look so young," another commented to Mari. "You look like you should still be in high school."

"I already finished high school," Mari informed them.

"Really?" Another questioned. "What about college?"

"Unnecessary," Mari replied simply, but didn't elaborate. Instead, she looked over the heads of the girls at Yuuko. "Do you have time to spare at the moment?"

"Yep," Yuuko replied, and pushed passed her classmates.

She grabbed Mari's hand and started pulling her down the hall, toward a room she knew would be empty.

"So what's up?" Yuuko asked. "Will it get me out of this place early?"

"Maybe," Mari allowed.

She looked behind herself, and when she moved to the side, Yuuko saw a child there. A dead one. One that appeared to be on the verge of turning into a demon.

"Grandpa Shizuka asked me to take this child to the shop," Mari murmured, "and I tried, but…"

"Could you not find it?" Yuuko questioned.

"It's not that," Mari replied. "I don't like it there—that place scares me. I know it was a bad place for Grandma Himawari to be, and I don't like the things I feel there."

"Mm," Yuuko mused, "there are a lot of bad things in the storeroom."

Mari looked at the deformed child, who was clinging to her dress, seemingly unaware of the conversation. "I'd like to help her, but I don't know how, and she won't follow me into the temple, so neither Grandpa Shizuka nor Grandma Kohane can do anything. Watanuki can consider it a wish from me for him to help her."

"Help her move on?" Yuuko confirmed.

Mari nodded. "Before she turns into something that _can't_ move on."


	33. Chapter 16 P2

Sixteen-Part Two

"So you took her without hesitation and brought her over here," Watanuki surmised, and sighed. "Yuuko, you shouldn't let lost souls attach themselves to you."

"She's not attached to me," Yuuko disagreed.

"Oh really?" Watanuki looked pointedly at the little hands of the dead child, which here holding Yuuko's hand to its face.

Yuuko gave him a sulky look. "Well, I couldn't just say no."

Watanuki sighed—same old Yuuko, selfish and kind to a fault.

"Plus," Yuuko went on, "if you hadn't been sleeping when Grandma Kohane tried to call you, Mari wouldn't have had to bring her to me."

Watanuki scoffed, but knelt down and placed his hand on the rotting soul's head.

He knew that even with the bad luck gone from her body, the shop still wasn't a good place for Himawari's great great granddaughter to be, and he wasn't surprised the dead child couldn't go into the temple. It was too corrupted now to step into holy places. He also wasn't surprised that it would latch onto Mari, who had once been dead herself.

What was he to do with her, though? Mari hadn't made the wish herself, so he couldn't take payment from her for sending the child to the other side, and he couldn't send the child to the other side without payment.

"You're the one…"

It was a raspy, almost nonexistent voice. Watanuki might have thought it was his imagination if he hadn't seen the child's lips move with the words.

"I'm sorry," he said with a calm smile, "I'm afraid I didn't catch that. What did you say?"

"You're the one," the child repeated, louder this time and looking him in the eye. "You're the living doll that everyone talks about."

"Living doll?" Watanuki and Yuuko questioned simultaneously.

"An artificial thing with a soul," the child whispered, more to itself than to them.

Watanuki and Yuuko exchanged confused glances, and Watanuki asked, "Who told you that?"

"Everyone," the child rasped, as if it hurt to speak. "Everyone says it—whispers it everywhere. Everyone knows." Its eyes faded out of focus for a moment. "No, you can't speak. They get angry every time you speak…"

Again, Watanuki and Yuuko exchanged confused looks.

"Who gets angry at you?" Yuuko asked.

The child blinked, and went back to hiding its face behind Yuuko's hand. Watanuki thought for a second, trying to figure out what that may have meant, and it occurred to him…

"You were brought back here by a man, weren't you?" He questioned. "A really big man with tan skin?"

The child nodded against Yuuko's hand.

"But she's not a corpse," Yuuko argued, knowing where Watanuki's thoughts had gone. "If the necromancer had done this, she wouldn't be just a corrupted soul."

Watanuki shook his head as he stood straight. "Part of the practice of necromancy entails calling the soul back from the other side so that it can inhabit its body again. The thing is, that only lasts so long before the body begins to rot away, and after it does, the soul is left in a decomposed condition—at least, that's what I've been told." He looked down at the child. "I would wager that that's what happened to this one."

"But she can't be more than five or six," Yuuko countered. "Why would a necromancer try to bring her back and then just abandon her soul?"

Watanuki bent down again. "Can you tell us that?" He asked. "Can you tell us where that man is or what he's trying to do?" He gave it another smile. "If you can tell me that, then I'll be able to help you."

The child looked at him again, but only for a moment.

"There were lots of others around," it said, "but only that man had a beating heart, even though he didn't seem like a living thing, either. We could all hear it. It kept saying things…talking about gods and a witch and a magician."

A magician?

"Did you ever hear why he was doing the things he was doing?" Watanuki questioned.

The child hesitated, but said, "Sobek. He wants someone called Sobek. He called out for that person a lot."

"Do you know what he wants her for?" Yuuko asked.

Again, the child hesitated. "I think he just wanted that person."

Watanuki raised his eyebrow. He highly doubted that anyone would massacre dozens of merpeople and commit taboo acts just because they wanted someone who would likely kill them for it anyway. He also highly doubted a shaman would help someone to attain such a personal goal. They had to have something bigger planned.

"Do you know where he is?" Yuuko probed.

The child shook its head. "He left the place he kept us at."

Yuuko's brow furrowed. "How many of you were there?"

"Lots," the child replied. "Lots and lots of us everywhere."

Watanuki's eyes widened. There were more—_lots_ more—of souls like this child wondering around, corrupted and on the verge of demonization?

"But they're all gone now," the child continued.

"What do you mean?" Watanuki asked.

"Other things came after the living man left," the child explained. "They ate everyone else."

"Demons," Yuuko murmured. Only demons would be drawn to such corruption, let alone eat it.

"I got away," the child said, "but I can't find the half-living man anywhere."

"So you attached yourself to Mari," Watanuki surmised.

"That girl is like me," the child all but whispered.

"No," Watanuki shook his head, his voice gentle. "That girl died once, but she isn't like you."

"I heard them say so," the child argued quietly. "Another man with a beating heart, one who did seem like a living thing—he said he found a body that died once, and then lived on. He said it was like us, but didn't rot. He said it could hold Sobek."

Watanuki and Yuuko both stared at the child.

"Does that mean…"

"He's been looking for a container," Watanuki murmured, "and thanks to that shaman, he's found one…Himawari's granddaughter…"

It had been a long time since Watanuki felt genuine rage.

"Hey," Yuuko murmured, and both Watanuki and the child looked up at her. "You have a wish, don't you?"

The child lowered its eyes. "I wish to be in the place I should be."

"And your wish will be granted," Watanuki said quietly. That bit of information was enough to cover it.

Yuuko knelt down and wrapped her arms around the child, and she forced the corruption out with her own energy. She, in essence, purified the soul…and the soul disappeared with a relieved, carefree laugh.

Yuuko and Watanuki remained, though, silent and surrounded by a heavy atmosphere.

It wasn't for a few minutes that Yuuko murmured, "Hey, Watanuki?"

"Hmm?"

"How much more will it take until you can restore my memories?" Yuuko asked.

"Honestly," Watanuki murmured, "not much more."

"That's good," Yuuko said. "If I can remember how I stopped that guy before, then I can do it again."

Watanuki huffed and slumped back against the couch, still sitting on the floor. "We still don't know why he's trying to bring Sobek into the physical world…or where he is."

"The witch that girl mentioned was probably me," Yuuko theorized, "but what magician?"

Watanuki leaned his head back. "There was a magician you knew, back then…but I don't know his name or what kind of power he had. All I know is that you thought he was a creep."

"A creep, huh?" Yuuko mused. She shuffled over to Watanuki and tucked herself into his side. "I don't need to remember any creeps other than you."

Watanuki snorted humorlessly. "I'm a creep now?"

"The only way you could be creepier is if you grew your hair out," Yuuko informed him.

Watanuki rolled his eyes.

"We need to tell everyone that the necromancer might come after Mari," Yuuko said.

"You know I can't do that without incurring a price," Watanuki replied.

"No, you can't," Yuuko smiled, "but I can."


	34. Chapter 16 P3

Sixteen-Part Three

It was a heavy atmosphere that surrounded Doumeki's temple.

Yuuko and Watanuki sat around a table with Shizuka, Kohane, Sakura, Syaoran, Doumeki, and Mari, and they were all looking at the surface of the table with expressions ranging from fearful to contemplative.

Yuuko did all the talking. Watanuki hadn't said a word. Even if he had intended to participate in the conversation, he was too distracted by Mari's face, which grew blanker and blanker with each word. It reminded him too much of Himawari's face—of the face she had made after he had woken up after being hurt so badly, falling from a window at school. All she had to do was tie her hair up in pigtails, and they would have been identical.

Doumeki was the one to break the silence that followed Yuuko's revelations.

"What can we do?"

"I don't know," Yuuko admitted. "We can't find the necromancer—we don't even know how to begin to look for him—so I guess all we can do is make sure we're prepared if and when he comes after Mari."

"Be prepared how?" Shizuka questioned.

"Mm," Yuuko thought for a moment, and then look at Mari. "Well, I guess the most basic precaution would be for you to stay inside the temple grounds. That necromancer is extremely corrupt—he won't be able to step inside a pure place like this."

Mari glanced at the Doumeki's. "Even if he can't come in here and grab me himself, that doesn't mean he can't get someone else to do it."

"You're not leaving," Doumeki stated, as if he was simply informing her of a minor arrangement.

"My being here puts the rest of you in danger," Mari pointed out. "I don't want anyone to be hurt because of me, least of all you guys."

"You're not leaving," Doumeki repeated.

"We'll be fine," Kohane said, leaning forward slightly to look around Doumeki at Mari. "We may not be as young as we used to be, but our magic hasn't declined any."

"She's right," Sakura agreed, and placed her hand on Mari's shoulder. "We're not going to let him take you or hurt us to get you."

"And even if you did leave," Syaoran added, "if he did manage to use you to bring forth a god, there's no telling what kind of damage he could cause thereafter, and we would likely get swept up in it anyway."

"Mm," Shizuka agreed. "Suijin is supposed to be a powerful and deadly god—if a god like that was under the control of a necromancer, he could kill _everyone_."

Mari shifted uncomfortably.

"It's okay to depend on people, you know," Yuuko informed her, and she looked up. "There's nothing wrong with being protected when you need to be—it's not the same thing as taking advantage of others."

Mari raised her eyebrow. "So as long as it's not what I want, it's okay for others to be in danger because of me, but if I did want them to protect me, then it wouldn't be okay? Is that the difference between depending on others and taking advantage of them?"

Yuuko made a contemplative noise, unsure of how to answer that.

"Danger is danger," Mari muttered, standing, "and my or anyone else's wants won't matter if they die—and if this 'necromancer' is as powerful as the shaman I met, well, the possibility of you all dying is just too high for me to just sit here and be 'protected'."

They all watched her leave the room, and then watched Doumeki follow her out.

"Why don't you two spend the night here," Kohane suggested to Watanuki and Yuuko.

"Okay," Yuuko agreed cheerily, and got up. "I'll go call Maru and Moro."

She all but skipped out of the room, and Kohane and Sakura followed her.

"I guess I'll get some sake, then," Syaoran decided.

"Yeah," Shizuka agreed.

Still, Watanuki remained silent.

It wasn't until Syaoran was gone that Shizuka looked at Watanuki, and after a moment of consideration, nudged him and motioned for him to follow, which he did. Shizuka led him out to the back porch, and they sat down there, clearly able to see the moon.

"She'll be safe here," Shizuka said.

"She doesn't seem to think so," Watanuki replied. "What if she tries to leave, thinking you'll all be safe if she does?"

Shizuka sighed. "That great grandson of mine is a lot like me, isn't he?"

"Too much so," Watanuki agreed.

"Mm," Shizuka nodded. "You probably remember Kohane's childhood a lot better than I do."

Watanuki raised an eyebrow at him, irritated. "What does that have to do with anything?"

"A spirit came after Kohane right before we got married," Shizuka told him. "It was the ghost of a woman who killed her husband and would have gotten away with it, if not for Kohane. She died in prison."

Watanuki gave him a demanding look. "I don't remember that."

"That's because we never told you," Shizuka said, as if that was an obvious thing.

Watanuki growled at him. "Why not?"

"She didn't want to worry you," Shizuka replied. "She also didn't want me to get hurt, so she said she would take care of the spirit herself—but doing so would mean staying away from me and the temple. The ghost couldn't come near here. She wanted to cleanse it, but you know as well as I that that would have been very dangerous, since she herself was the object of the ghost's grudge."

Watanuki huffed in agreement. "She was obviously okay, though."

"Yeah," Shizuka nodded, "because I didn't let her go."

Watanuki gave him a hesitant look. "What do you mean?"

"She came here to tell me she had decided to purify the spirit by herself," Shizuka elaborated, "but I wouldn't let her leave. I took her to my room that night and kept her with me until she finally agreed to let me help her."

Watanuki was gaping at him before he finished the last sentence, trying to think up something to say, but was distracted by the serious look Shizuka gave him.

"He will probably do the same," he said, "and he won't let her leave, so don't worry—and _do not_ do anything that would result in _you_ being hurt."

Watanuki blinked at him, and then scoffed. "Still lecturing me, even though you're just Doumeki."


End file.
